


Sixth Son

by orphan_account



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst, Jjbek, M/M, Magic, Riding horses, Saving the World, doing magic, i can't write in past tense, or can i
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-03-16 05:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13629342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "Are you ready?" Mila said, placing the charm on the necklace chain in the center of the glyph they'd dug into the dirt behind the garden gates and lined with focusing objects at points."That?" Otabek asked, pointing to the charm."Give it to the Prince to wear," Mila said."Well," Otabek scoffed. "That won't work!""Look, I'll help you cast, fix and source the spell, and you get it on him. That's your problem, going around saying spells with half the ingredients in your pocket."Otabek knew his cheeks were reddening in the moonlight.





	1. Chapter 1

"No one defeats me!"

That was the triumphant shout that reached Otabek's ears. It seemed to come from too high up. He had just walked out through the East gate of the castle, and there was the voice he was listening for.

Up on the main aqueduct that fed the boiler room, the same aqueduct that was easily climbed upon, if one risked getting char on one's clothes and scaled the wall up and out using loosened bricks pulled out of the stonework, straddling the limestone-walled channels - there, the long-legged figure, sliver of a fencing sword in hand and glinting in mid-afternoon night. Clearly, he had just knocked his opponent (some duke's son) onto his behind, splashing into the channel.

The vanquished sparring partner flailed, kicking angrily, and swept one of the prince's feet out from him.

He swayed and hopped frantically but lost his footing and then he was free-falling, with a short exclamation.

Otabek sighed, reaching out a hand and twisting a bit of magic to slow and cushion the prince's fall.

As castle healer, he really didn't have to be out there, but after getting to know his charges (well, his main charge), he had become quite adept at predicting when he was going to be needed. Especially in this case, with the prince. Most times it was hard to remember that the prince was the same age as him. Life had been handed to him on a silver platter, and with no trials to test and hone his character, Otabek had long ago concluded the reason for his - oh, his lack of caution, restraint, and relative maturity.

Alnaithean prince Jean-Jacques Leroy  _thumped_ on the well-manicured hillside that surrounded the castle grounds, a short rise before the capital city of Alnaith spread out around them, with a short grunt, his fencing sword bouncing and whipping off flashily in the sun as he lost hold of it. Conveniently, sword and owner landed in a patch of daffodils (yellow, national color), that grew high enough Otabek could dawdle a little in getting to the prince (but not too much). He should have changed out of the long brown, sheathed overcoat, Otabek thought; the spring was warmer than it looked, and his carrier bird on his left arm jerked its head about, interested in newly green and colorful surroundings.

"Otabek!" Jean-Jacques struggled up so his mop of dark hair and expression crossed with a squint of pain was easily visible. Otabek strode the few remaining paces over to him.

"No one defeats you, hm? Did you consider gravity?" Otabek said placidly, staring down (a luxury, because the prince was a full head taller than him) at his soon-to-be patient.

Jean-Jacques held his leg. "It's definitely hurt, come on." The stamp of pain on his face was honest, Otabek had to admit.

Otabek gripped Jean's hand as if to pull him up, but this was not that, it was a diagnosis. The contact allowed Otabek to see Jean's golden signature, outlining the systems in his body.

Quickly Otabek located the damage: a fracture, small, but still there, in the tibia. Some ligament damage too. He sighed and motioned a concentration of magic to the zone; it would do to help it stop hurting, and perhaps jumpstart the healing process until he could get the prince to the healing wing for a quick spell. He whistled a few notes spattered with a touch of magical otherwords to his bird and it took off, for the castle to fetch a stretcher and whoever happened to be on medical alert.

"I didn't break it, did I?" Jean-Jacques squinted, but he looked to be in less pain.

"No," Otabek said, nonplussed.

The prince looked up at the aqueduct, where his opponent was squirreling quickly on the elevated channel back to the castle side, probably to clamber back down onto the roof of the boiler room and escape before he was caught.

Otabek was fifteen. He was built strongly for his age, with dark hair shaved on the sides and braided back down the middle, slanted deep brown eyes, different tone of skin than the majority of castle residents and a knotted tattoo on his chest, and another on his neck concealed by his white under-tunic: all marks of a Haqan. The land recently fully conquered by the expanding Alnaith kingdom. They had killed his mother. They had killed anyone not useful to them. Otabek was here because that was the only way to save his life. Who were  _they_? The Alnaitheans, of course, with their gold-edged white armor, leagues on leagues of troops, fair skin and royals with golden eyes: the same hue of Jean-Jacques', the mark of the bloodline; the people that could, despite all their illustrious advancements, not use a shred of magic, and dared to look down on the ones they used to do it for them. Which were the Haqan people.

Otabek was only here, working for the great kingdom of Alnaith, catering to the royals' every cut and bruise, because it was keeping him alive. At least, that had been the initial reason. Now, it might afford some future advantage.

"Come on, pull me up, we'll get back inside," the prince told Otabek and tried to stand but Otabek pushed him back down in the flowers.

"Stay here, people are coming," Otabek told him.

Jean-Jacques had become a bit more pliable to Otabek's suggestions during the past few months, or years. He proved this trend by sitting where he was put.

If they were to head back in, Otabek would have to keep the magic going while supporting most of Jean-Jacques' weight and probably have more to heal once they got back. He was able to do that, certainly, but he didn't feel like it.

Things had changed since Otabek was taken as prisoner-of-war, along with the people of his city who were deemed valuable enough, when he was 11. He didn't start off in the castle. But he ended up here when he (and the prince) were 12. He proved himself in short time, learning the Alnaithean language and his own magical capabilities quickly, and now, if he was honest with himself, he had fairly free reign with what he did outside of his duties. Not that Jean-Jacques gave him too much free time. Perhaps that was why his responsibility had been shifted over to the prince: to keep him occupied.

It didn't feel like it had been nearly three years: Otabek could easily remember his first dealings with the prince, could still recall how brash and childish he had been, to a more absurd degree than he is now (Otabek remembers when he climbed up the rope of the belltower with a bucket of paint and questionable artistic vision and said it had been a dare from one of his older brothers - and broken his arm all the same). Or, how about breaking into the underground workrooms when they were first testing the new Engine and nearly burning his skin off? No, this Jean-Jacques was now a sliver, yes, albeit just a sliver, less foolhardy. At least, he didn't pout anymore when he was told to take a bit more caution. Now, he just looked out across the field of flowers towards the city, waiting.

The carrier bird flew back in from over the castle wall; Otabek whistled a greeting and held out his arm with the thick leather sleeve on it, and the bird alighted back.

"I want a bird," Jean-Jacques said.

Otabek remembered when Jean-Jacques' voice used to be awkwardly high-pitched and cracking, but now it had settled down into a lower register. He had always been tall; that didn't change. He had always been spindly, and now his frame was gaining strength: shoulders first, Otabek could tell.

"Ask for it for your birthday," Otabek said.

Jean-Jacques had received a prime racing stallion for his last birthday (as did his older four brothers and two sisters). He barely rode it.

"I don't actually," the prince changed his mind. "I want a better broadsword. But Elgred thinks it's unnecessary and mother says it's uncouth. Did you use stupid tiny fencing swords in Haqan?"

"No," Otabek shook his head.

Jean-Jacques made a displeased face, presumably directed towards his parents (his mother, and the man from a neighboring kingdom she had married after King Alain died; for politics' sake, everyone knew). "I also hate dancing lessons. I have dancing lessons later. Hey, I can't go since my leg is broken though!" The prince brightened.

"Your leg is not broken," Otabek reminded him.

At first, the prince had been nothing but abrasive and awkwardly confrontational whenever Otabek attended to him as assigned, or healed a scrape or cut or worse. Otabek had thought it to be lack of manners towards a Haqan; but briefly, only before he figured out the confrontation was different from the dismissiveness of most other Alnaitheans. Instead, now he attributed their initial interactions to honest confusion on how exactly to interact, on the prince's part. He was now mostly confident that Jean-Jacques, to some extent, appreciated the healer's company. Well, the prince's elder brothers were mainly busy being old enough to do princely things; learning how to oversee towns and cities, travelling to international meetings, and that sort of thing. Otabek knew Jean-Jacques went riding or sometimes convinced his sisters to do something stupid with him, but you can only spar or play at sport so much with the princesses before they think it's unfair and go off in a fit.

Otabek could also say that he enjoyed the prince's company, more than anyone else at the castle; perhaps if he could socialize more with fellow Haqan, things would have been different, but the Alnaitheans did a good job of keeping their servants' jobs and schedules separate. The prince was at least curious about Haqan and where Otabek came from, if insensitive; at least he took an interest and did not look down his nose at Otabek as other Alnaithean royalty and court members tended to do.

It was a cursory enjoyment, though, and Otabek had to be careful not to get too comfortable. If Otabek vanished away, the prince wouldn't care, and Otabek wouldn't either, Otabek thought, but he couldn't be sure if he was really thinking this or telling himself. Especially as they sat/stood on the hill of the castle, oddly waiting together, with the relatively easy task of pain reduction magic joining them together in time, the fact that Otabek had sought Jean-Jacques out, half-knowing that he would be somewhere injuring himself at around this time in the midafternoon, even though taking that initiative was not Otabek's duty.

He decided to switch thoughts, then, to the planned midnight meeting and the news that it could bring - an excitement and concern sat at the back of his mind, to somehow pass the hours until they would know if the latest Speaking had succeeded - when several (Alnaithean) servants hustled down the hillside with a stretcher.

"A stretcher?! I don't need a stretcher!" the prince complained as they gathered him up with concern under Otabek's direction.

Otabek just stooped to pick up Jean-Jacques' fallen sword and tossed the pretty, light thing in a hand, with a slight smile.

"Otabek! I don't need a stretcher!" Now the prince squinted in the sunlight, already golden eyes made brighter.

"His honor needs a stretcher," Otabek said seriously to the attendants as they paused, and then continued accordingly.

"Bring my sword with me," Jean-Jacques settled to order, pointing at the thing in Otabek's possession.

Otabek's carrier bird squawked.

"He is insistent, is he not?" Otabek said with a half-smile to his animal companion, and took up following the entourage back inside the castle. Maybe while the prince was resting, either before or after Otabek fixed the injury properly, Otabek could go to the Engine testing scheduled for later in the afternoon. Anything to pass the time until he could sleep, and then, until he could wake up and slip out of the castle to the old underhill brewery on the edge of the city.

No, he could not get too comfortable, even with his mother's death a scar he had to live with and his father taken to another Alnaithean-conquered city far away from the capital, a face he hadn't seen for years, and perhaps was growing used to not seeing. Maybe the first was irreversible, and maybe the Alnaitheans thought everything they did was irreversible, but they would be proven wrong, soon. Soon, Otabek had to believe, and the apprehension and excitement was enough to keep him not too still in his seat, in his comfortable position that many other Haqans forced under Alnaithean rule would envy.

===========================

"Hold still," Otabek told the prince. Jean-Jacques was sitting a low bed in the healing wing, a room in a turret so nicely sequestered from any folk of lower status happening to also be recovering from some ailment, a few steps and a door up from the main level of the infirmary.

Since Jean-Jacques was the room's most frequent occupant, and Otabek was Jean-Jacques' most frequent caretaker, it had sort of become a storage room for Otabek's various books and tools, gems and feathers and knick-knacks and any item, really, that held more than the average amount of magic or had a special order or property to the magic stored in it. Useful for spellmaking, like now.

Otabek could feel the prince watching him, intent as ever (Jean-Jacques was always interested when Otabek was doing any kind of spell: unusually, because any other Alnaithean of his rank wouldn't have looked at their Haqan servant any more doing magic than if they were peeling an apple) as he drew efficient dusty white lines on the ground around Jean-Jacques' bed. It would just make the whole thing a little easier and he wouldn't have to concentrate as much with the marks helping to focus the spell. And maybe a bit of the feldspars on the second shelf, too, Otabek thought.

"You haven't even started yet," the prince complained, but holding still as told, nevertheless. Maybe because Otabek wasn't bothering too much with easing the pain anymore; it would all be gone soon anyways.

Finishing off the curves and angles, Otabek did a small spellcheck, rearranged the feldspar, checked again, and stood back to start the spell.

He gathered the magic floating about in the close radius around Jean-Jacques to attention, using his well-placed markers to sort it out. Recalling the pattern of the wound before, he focused on where exactly he would send all the magic and how he would order it; "You might feel a little drowsy after," Otabek told the prince, because really, he could tire himself out or he could borrow a little energy from the prince for this, and Jean-Jacques really did deserve it and not he, for falling off the aqueduct. Then, with a quick outward motion, he sent the magic concentrating to the prince's leg. This was the hard part. He started putting it all in order; ah, the feldspar wasn't helping as much as hoped, he must've not stored enough magic in it last time he used it.

Otabek bent down to kneel on the wood floor and touch the injured site, expanding his vision with the contact and clarifying exactly what he had to do. His task made easier, soon everything was back in place, the fracture was closed and the ligaments were restored.

"Why can't I do that," the prince said, pulling his leg up and inspecting it as Otabek stood.

"Because you can't," Otabek said.

"At least I should try. It is very useful," the prince proclaimed.

"Then you wouldn't need me," Otabek half-smirked, grabbing a broom to sweep all the white dust off the floor into a corner, taking up the feldspar and putting it in one of the deep pockets of his long overcoat while he was at it. The last Engine testing released a good deal of loose magic that was relatively easy to gather up; he'd take advantage of that again.

Otabek swept away one line, then another, then a curve, then another, and it wasn't too long before he felt the prince staring at his back, and so he kept sweeping, but soon there was nothing more to sweep, and when he turned back around to look at the prince, well, Jean-Jacques was indeed staring at him. With those golden-royal eyes.

"Let me try!" Jean-Jacques said, but he rather blurted it.

"Go to sleep," Otabek told him.

Surely they had the strangest relationship of any Alnaithean and Haqan in all of the kingdom. This prince was endlessly curious, and Otabek would very much have liked to entertain his curiosity - but there was a greater good at stake, something more important than following what was likely to be a short trail of friendship with who was supposed to be his master.

"How do you do it? Is it hard?" the prince pressed.

Usually, Jean-Jacques only asked about the various items shelved on the walls. That was easy enough to blather on about and try to bore the prince with. Giving as many dull details as possible and watching the prince eventually give up on obtaining any entertainment from Otabek's accounts was a secret enjoyment of his.

"Not terribly, but don't try to make my job any harder than it is," Otabek sighed. He should get to the Engine room.

"I want to try! I don't care if I can't! It's not fair, why can't I do magic just because I'm not Haqan?"

Otabek turned sharply before he could stop himself. "It's not fair?!" he exclaimed, feeling heat rising in his chest and the ache in his heart from everything he'd lost that was so easily uncovered.

Jean-Jacques looked at him and Otabek realized his outburst too late, bowed his head quickly. But he couldn't apologize for it either. And something told him he didn't need to. Not with the prince. He was too flighty. He wouldn't care, he would dismiss it, dismiss both sides of the case.

"I guess it isn't," the prince said, and Otabek was confused to see him biting his lip for a second and looking out the turret window, almost introspectively, a look Otabek barely saw on him.

"I beg your leave. I have to restore the feldspar . . . for the next time you hurt yourself," Otabek said, in a serious tone, but Jean-Jacques whipped his head back around, a sparkle in his eyes.

"You have to. And tell my dance instructor I am recovering and I cannot attend class. I hate dancing with Felicia anyways. Or any of the Duke and Archduke's daughters. I hate them all. They're so dumb! All they care about is the new dresses they are getting shipped from Xang! I don't mind dancing but I hate having to be polite and practice talking nicely with them! I would rather step on their feet on purpose! Actually I  _do_  sometimes!"

The prince flopped back down on the bed as if to sleep. "Good day, Otabek!" he said forcefully, but trailed off into a dramatic sigh.

"Good day, your honor," Otabek said and went to the door, slightly amused.

"Just call me JJ, no stupid honor stuff," the prince muttered into his pillow.

Otabek left the room. That was an order he couldn't follow, because if anyone else of the prince's rank heard him foregoing the formality, he would get in trouble for sure. But no one could read his thoughts.

===========================

The night breeze kept Otabek alert as he stole out of his dormitory, down the carpeted stone hall and out through the side passage the gardeners used. He wore soft leather boots, something you wouldn't find on any Haqan who was not a castle resident. The cooks weren't treated too badly, unless you thought of the people who had demolished your homeland taking you captive and granting you the merciful privilege of preparing your land's unique dishes to fit their fine tastes. At least the cooks had decent working hours and good beds to sleep on; Otabek couldn't say as much for the boiler room shovellers or those that worked with the heavy and dangerous metal castings down in the Engine workrooms.

To the royalty, the inner cogs and workings of their system were likely no more human than they wanted their Engine to be.

Otabek kept himself to the edge of the birches lining the southern slope of the castle, already marking the whereabouts of the rendezvous point far off around the edge of the town in front of him. The moonlight was bright enough that passing under an arching aqueduct cast a shadow over Otabek briefly. There were several main aqueducts in the town, and the ones that supplied the castle were more for show; the integral plumbing had been put in underground using cast metal piping. The old structures served more to give the Alnaithean capital's castle more grandeur than anything; and to provide a structure to spar on, if you happened to be particularly hotheaded.

A brisk ten-minute walk was all it took for Otabek to arrive the brick-and-thatch building and let himself in, raise the door to the cellar and climb down the ladder.

A warm light glowed from the end of the packed dirt tunnel, along with voices. Soon Otabek emerged into the hollowed-out room, gas lamps pegged into the wall around its circumference; if Otabek bothered to do a spellcheck, he would have seen someone had drawn a bit of magic about to keep the light burning efficiently and the gas going up through the channels to the outside air. It was nothing hidden among them that most Haqan had nothing to their name; in the city, well-off families could afford a Haqan servant to do tasks ranging from laundry to horse training. Thus, any possessions the Haqan had, they tried to stretch as far as they could go.

The room, being quite large, could accommodate around fifty people, and it was full, most Haqan sitting cross-legged on the carpets thrown on the ground, with Mila, honorary Qanaa, in the middle. Of course, these were only representatives of the larger Haqan population in the city; most could not afford to risk the midnight meeting.

Otabek entered and said hushed greetings to his fellow men and women, customary short bows, coming to sit near to Mila in the center, who gave him a short bow in return. Mila was lucky enough to be employed as a musical educator for a rich Lord's family. By default, Otabek and Mila had grown to be the leaders of the Haqan Rise, as they were the most well-off; Mila was also niece to the now-deceased Qana and Qanaa: rulers of the Haqan.

"Thank you for coming," Mila formally began the meeting. She wore normal grey- and earth-hued clothes, wide-sleeved tunic underneath, as most Haqan, but the belted over-tunic with diamond stitches was clearly a sign she had been given favor. She was four years' Otabek's elder, but they got along as if peers.

Otabek looked at the faces around him; all with the same shaved sides of their heads, hair down the middle loose for the night or braided as it was supposed to be. Northern and Central Haqan alike, a mix of dark skin to fairer, but all with short stature and high cheekbones and jawlines that didn't match those of the Alnaitheans, and a common purpose, moreover. "I received the message from the encampment about the recent speaking that took place three nights ago," Mila said. They spoke their own language there. "Unfortunately, there is still no sign of the prophecy coming to fruition. Despite this, the sixth son of our Qana'a is still well, and the surviving of our leadership still hidden."

Heads shook around the room, accompanied by dissatisfied murmurings.

"How old is he now? Fourteen?" Otabek said

"Yes," Mila confirmed.

"It would be nice if the prophecy were more specific about at what age it manifests," Otabek sighed. Most Haqan could use magic, but that didn't mean everyone could use it to the same extent; different people had the ability to see different amounts of the magic naturally in the environment around them, and according ability to control the order of it. It was foretold - and it had happened before - that there were some born who had the map for the whole order of magic, all the magic in the world, written in their souls.

Those present talked and exchanged news; Otabek conversed with a few; but Mila dismissed the meeting soon. Another Speaking would be held in two weeks.

The Haqan filtered out until only Otabek and Mila were left.

"We can't wait much longer to see if the Qana's sixth son is indeed what we hope he will be," Mila said to Otabek as she began rolling the carpets up and Otabek stooped to assist.

"What other choice do we have?"

Mila sood up straight, looking at Otabek with her light blue eyes; not a usual trait for Haqan, something in the bloodlines back, and maybe something that had contributed to her place of favor with Alnaithean masters.

"We are strong enough. There are enough of us. I completed a survey this week based on every Haqan we can reach in this city. Although the order was destroyed in the high temple, we still have enough of our magic we could fight for, and win, our freedom - if we don't hold off too long."

Otabek bit his lip, considering. When the Alnaitheans took the Haqan capital, they destroyed the high temple, the place guarded day and night that held all magic in order. Ever since its obliteration, the magic that Otabek could see around him was fragmented, and he didn't like to think about it, but his field of vision and control was slowly narrowing. There were reports of storms in the northern mountains; quakes that sent tall waves building from the ocean's center to the shores; in many years, or a few, who could tell, the Alnaitheans would reap their due rewards for destroying the balance. And every other kingdom along with them.

"We still need the sixth son," Otabek shook his head.

"We take back our freedom and use it to find him!" Mila exclaimed. "Look, Beka." The shortened, familiar form of his name. "All we need is a figurehead."

Otabek stared at her for some moments.

"You," he said.

"I might be related to the Qana'a, but I am not a fighter."

"Neither am I!"

"You have so many more resources at your disposal, Otabek. It's no secret you are the highest-ranking Haqan here."

"Our freedom," Otabek said. In his mind's eye he saw his mother's long hair tangled with the dirt and dust of the wreckage of the city, and her blood, and death robbing her skin of its warm hue once he got to her in the wake of the Alnaithean armies' shining swords and white armor. And he agreed. They couldn't wait for the prophecy to come true to start acting any longer, not while they slowly lost touch with the untethered order of magic that would eventually see the world's ruin, be it decades from now, but it would happen.

"Everyone looks up to you. You are probably the strongest magic user among us."

Otabek nodded.

"Alright."

"I've started mapping out a plan. With enough coordination, we can map the piping put under the castle hill. Working together, we can bring down the structure, if we can also use the old aqueducts to our advantage. But it's much more than that. It will be taking the royalty, pinning the Alnaithean leadership under our thumbs, that will give us our freedom, and . . . you're the one to do head up that effort."

"Long overdue," Otabek managed a small smile, quickly getting used to the idea.

Soon they said their goodbyes and Otabek was off to the castle to catch a few more hours' sleep.

There was one thing Otabek decided, turning in the covers, before he closed his eyes: if he was going to be the figurehead of the Haqan Rise, he would need to know how to fight.

===========================

"Would you like to try magic," Otabek said, a little nervously and uncomfortably, as he brought Jean-Jacques' -- or JJ's, as it were -- horse back to the stables and started to pace it in a circle as the prince looked on, leaning on the fence. This certainly was no healer's duty but the prince had told him to come and do the task, and Otabek was experienced enough with horses, so he acquiesced. The way Alnaitheans rode, with so many strappings and trappings, belts and cushions on horses always mystified him, but he had learned in what order all this machinery was supposed to go on and how.

There were not many people out by the stables this close to dinnertime; in fact, they should have been heading back inside the main castle grounds by now, so Otabek was thus forced to quickly start forging his little deal.

"Of course!" the prince said. "Don't you think he has an odd trot? Theo's has a solid gait. I think Elgred likes Theo the best just because he's the oldest."

"He's fine for a riding horse," Otabek commented. "I wouldn't start crossing the Nazira on this one, though."

"The Nazira? What's that?"

"The long desert on the eastern border of Haqan," Otabek said.

"Oh, the Long Eastern Desert," JJ said.

"Exactly," Otabek said, but crossly, because Alnaithean names were like that. Nazira, for the legend of the woman . . . oh, but he was getting off track.

"And technically, it's Alnaith now," the prince said, but his tone was listless, like he was reciting something from class.

"Anyways . . . would you like to learn -" Otabek re-started.

"Of course I want to learn magic! When do we start?!" the prince interrupted him.

"It's a deal, though. You have to teach me swordfighting," Otabek said, still nervous, because it was oh-so-out-of-place to speak to his superiors like this. But the prince was nonplussed.

"Fine. Sure! Only broadsword. You have to help me practice. No one else will! We can go to the storage room, the lower passage behind the one where they keep all the old failed Engine parts. And you can teach me magic. Great!"

Chiming of the belltower started.

"Oh, I have to go back! Put away the horse for me! Meet you there at midnight! You know where it is right? Well just meet me at the staircase out the left Middle Hall!"

And the prince was off, mess of chin-length black hair blistering in the breeze kicking up, embroidered jerkin flapping, without bothering for an answer.

In whatever form, the mission was accomplished.

 

 ===================

[ I really only wrote this because of art ](https://sciencemakedrugtho.tumblr.com/post/170512788151/is-this-blog-active-anymore-haha-only-to-come-up)


	2. Chapter 2

Otabek began to take his spare moments and dedicate them to completing three tasks. One, to map out the underground piping networks for the rest of the Rise to start creating a plan of quick and easy collapse. This consisted of stealing away to the blueprint rooms, which were terribly disorganized, and having to use a draining invisibility spell on a couple of occasions; and sometimes, sneaking out to the bushes and gardens to do some testing and mapping of his own. Two, much of the same: plans to the castle, to plan the coup. And three, to gather magic. The prince insisted on coming down to the Engine testing in lieu of Old Language studies (which, frankly, Otabek didn't blame him for because Old Alnaithean was the most boring and convoluted tongue Otabek had ever tried to study) whenever he had the chance and of course he was curious about the things Otabek was turning over in his hand. Many times a stone, sometimes the same one if it could store more magic; sometimes a carved doll or even this one bronze pot handle that actually held quite a bit of magic.

So Otabek was kept busy, with Rise meetings weekly now, and still the Prince to attend to. The Prince and their new tryst. Otabek was the one who had to wake up on time, of course, the first time they agreed to meet, and go wait for the Prince in this one hall alcove, and wait and wait and wonder if JJ was coming but he didn't show. And so Otabek went back to bed in a rather foul mood.

The next day when Otabek came to bring JJ breakfast in bed (summoned by an Alnaithean servant who said the Prince had made that unusual request) the Prince shut the door and apologized profusely because he just wasn't used to waking up like that and they had to do it again of course, next evening, he would promise  _promise promise_ he'd wake up right. The sound of Alnaithean royalty apologizing to Otabek, strangely, was not so strange as he might have found it coming from anyone else, so he accepted, mostly. He negotiated for the night after next.

"I need some more sleep before I try that again," Otabek mostly lied when the Prince whined about  _why not tomorrow night?._ Because tomorrow night had been a Rise meeting.

But JJ showed up bright-eyed and raring to go at the predetermined meeting place on the newly scheduled time. (The Engine team's previous accomplishment was creating a device based on a special sort of stone to mark the time; it worked better than a sundial, although it looked a good deal more complicated, with gears and copper wires around a main housing and a weight that slowly dropped from the ceiling until the housing stopped turning and you had to put it back up. They had had help from a Haqan servant to make this one, and nobody knew what happened to that Haqan, and maybe it was why they were back to working with fire and steam and whatnot.)

JJ knew the underground plot of the castle well from the way he went this turn and that turn in the mostly-dark halls, having brought a sputtering torch "for effect!". Otabek didn't tell him, but put a small spell of a guard around the flame and oil soaked cloth because otherwise there was no doubt the Prince would burn himself and have to somehow explain it.

Eventually they arrived to a large room, all stone made, hot, with a bellows and smoldering firepit and lots of metal casts and castings and working tools around the room. However, there was a good area clear on one side, and there were already a pair of broadswords waiting.

The Prince ran over and swept one up and out of its sheath.

"I brought these earlier," he said proudly, giving the blade a few swipes, looking fairly comfortable with it, which impressed Otabek slightly. "This room is supposed to be sound silenced a bit. The noise from all the metalworking bothered my sisters," JJ said, pointing up at the ceiling.

Otabek nodded but moved his spell from JJ's torch, which he used to light a trough around the perimeter, to the surface area of their sparring area, to keep their activities from being overheard.

Picking up the other sword, Otabek found with no surprise that it was heavier than the Haqan blade. He felt good holding it; the leather-wrapped grip fit his hand.

"HAA!" the Prince yelled, lunging at him suddenly, causing Otabek to jump back from the halted slash of his sword. JJ started laughing as Otabek regained his composure.

"Always be ready," the Prince said, still laughing while Otabek growled and launched a meagre counterattack of his own, which JJ easily parried away.

JJ started to instruct him on his stance first and his grip and how to change those things. "The plan is that I teach you what I know and then we spar and get better," JJ told Otabek. But the Prince was quite good already, and the techniques on these two-handed grips were a completely different style from that of the Haqan. Not that Otabek had ever been a fighter; maybe a decent shot with the longbow though.

Though Otabek felt he needed 8 more years of footwork and stance and grip, JJ said they should try a little sparring. "The sooner the better! Learn by doing!" At this point Otabek was sure JJ was just pulling phrases from his instructors in all other fields, and from the look on his face, he was having fun. Though not at Otabek's expense of inexperience.

Within five minutes of actually meeting blades, pausing most times for JJ to explain something, the sword felt significantly heavier and Otabek was sweating. It was very warm in the room already. He was extremely surprised how JJ, of a lighter frame than he, was keeping up so well. Leaning his sword against the wall for a moment, Otabek undid his dark brown overcoat and slung it to the side, just with his loose white shirt now. JJ was already wearing just a loose shirt and pants.

Ten minutes later, the Prince asked Otabek if he was done. But Otabek felt like he was only just getting the hang of it. "We need time for magic too," JJ complained, but he was clearly enjoying himself, and they kept going, until sweat was dripping down into Otabek's eyes and he took off the long sleeved shirt as well. Gripping his sword again and adjusting his stance, he readied himself for a strike from the Prince, but JJ was just looking at him for a second. Otabek rolled his shoulders back, waiting. He still had a knotted Haqan tattoo, of his family's mark, across his left pec. At least that they hadn't taken from him. The Prince's eyes followed the intricate ink marks, and lingered still until Otabek felt uncomfortably warm again, but then JJ seemed to catch himself out of whatever trance he was in and they continued.

Eventually they both sat down together on the stone floor, tired out.

"I like your tattoo," JJ said to Otabek, lying back down on the floor. "Oh you have one on your back too. Your neck."

Otabek rubbed the numerals. "That's what I got when I came here."

"Oh. Right . . ." the Prince trailed, like he'd forgotten that's how the royalty kept track of their servants. He pushed back his mop of black hair and sat back up.

Nowhere else in Alnaith would you find these two social classes so close to each other, almost elbow-to-elbow.

Otabek couldn't say that he was using the Prince, but he definitely couldn't let this become any more than the strange sort of tryst it was.

"So, magic," JJ said, standing up with a stretch. "How do you do it?"

"Sit back down," Otabek told him, with a very fleeting sense of  _this is royalty and I'll be beheaded for talking like this_ \- before the Prince obeyed.

"My leg feels great," JJ said.

"I know," Otabek said.

"I want to lean how you do it."

"Have you ever seen any magic?"

The Prince wrinkled his nose, sitting cross legged opposite Otabek. "Like how?"

Otabek looked around the room. Seeing magic was somewhere between visual sight, a gut feeling, and a sixth sense. "Sensed it? Everyone who can work magic can see some. They have a small window into the order of things and a small window to control it. There's a decent amount of magic down here." Otabek sighed. Mila was right. Every passing day his window got a little bit fainter and a little smaller. It was still good enough to sense that the order wasn't held, and wouldn't be unless the Qana's son became what he was supposed to be.

"No, you're here to show me how to do that," JJ rolled his eyes.

"I can't teach you  _how_  unless you're naturally able to."

"So it is really true that only Haqan can use magic?" The Prince sounded disappointed.

Otabek cupped his hands and gathered some of the magic floating in the vicinity into a concentrated little ball. "If you can see any magic, I'll make it easy."

JJ stared and leaned in at the space above Otabek's cupped hands.

"You don't have to lean in so close," Otabek said.

"Fine. I can't see anything," JJ said, sitting back with arms crossed.

"There might be a chance if there was some Haqan somewhere back in your bloodline," Otabek said, but the situation had turned out as he had expected. There was really no chance the Prince could use magic. But he had to encourage him to keep their lessons going or else Otabek would never learn how to use a sword. Before he could say anything, JJ started talking.

"Well did you ever notice my skin is kind of darker?" The Prince didn't pause for an answer. "So it's not perfectly white. And did you know at special occasions, like when Theo got his ceremonial knighting, which was I think two years ago even - and lots before that - Mother would powder my face a bit? It wasn't mean of her but she thought people might, I guess, think badly if they saw - not much but -"

JJ's attention had wandered as he started telling his story and now he looked back at Otabek's hands, pointed, exclaimed, and then promptly looked confused.

"Did you see something?!" Otabek burst out, the magic flying out of his hands back into order (or what order there was).

"I-" JJ started, and then pointed again. "I think! Maybe! Do it again!"

It was probably just his active imagination, Otabek thought, reminding himself to be skeptical. But he gathered the magic back.

"I see it! Sort of. I know it's there. I can tell," the Prince exclaimed, nodding, reaching out a hand as if he expected to find something physical to touch in the space in between Otabek's palms.

"It could be your head playing tricks," Otabek said warningly, but he had to encourage these sessions somehow. He let the magic fly back out. JJ frowned.

"I guess so. It's gone now," JJ said.

Otabek sat up a bit straighter. Well, maybe there was some Haqan back in his bloodline after all. Who knew? The royalty wouldn't want  _anyone_ to know. "I wouldn't say anything for sure yet. Anyways, it's not useful to be able to see magic only when someone's gathered it into a nice ball for you. Your assignment this week is to try to see magic in your ordinary surroundings."

"I'll try," the Prince said seriously. "Do you really think I could do it? Do you think I really saw it? I think I did."

"Maybe," Otabek nodded.

The Prince leaned back on his hands and sighed, blowing a string of sweaty hair off his face. "Did you know Mother and Elgred, well, I think it's Elgred mostly, want to get me married to someone from Xang?! I can't even remember what the king and queen were like when they last came here, for Father's funeral! Elgred was going on like  _of course you've met her!_ but I was seven years old or something and she must have been only six! They're acquiring some new northern islands so I guess they want us to get married really soon." By the end of his spiel the Prince had his chin in his palms, leaning forward close to Otabek, looking at the stone ground. Otabek looked at the flecks of gold eyes under his dark lashes, which flicked up and went up to Otabek's bare torso, back to his chest tattoo.

Then JJ's hand was on his skin tracing the lines. Otabek flinched but held still out of pure shock than anything else.

"What does it mean?" JJ asked.

Otabek kept holding still while JJ's finger keept following the interwoven lines at sharp angles. "It's my family's mark," Otabek managed to form the words. "At the top is the clan, which goes generations back . . . and down at the bottom, this is a shortened script of my place in the line. First son."

JJ's finger reached that exact mark and then dropped off. He seemed entirely nonplussed and entirely at ease. On the other hand, Otabek's chest mark felt almost as hot as when he'd been given the tattoo.

The Prince yawned and stood up. "Well, I'm tired. We should do this every week or maybe more if I can see more magic."

He went towards the door after sheathing both his and Otabek's sword and kicking them under a bench. "If anyone finds these they'll just think they're the smithy servants fooling around," JJ guffawed. He looked back at Otabek. "You coming?"

Otabek realized he was still sitting and quickly got to his feet, remembering to take his shirt and overcoat, quickly pulling the former over his head.

"Yes," he said belatedly as JJ started to douse the perimeter fire with sand. Otabek grinned quickly and extinguished the flames with a quick twist of the magic hanging about.

"Hey! I still need a torch!" JJ said. Accordingly, Otabek ignited the oiled cloth JJ had just re-wrapped around the top of his stick.

"Get a real lamp next time," Otabek said, again with that split-second of alarm quick on the heels of those words - he couldn't speak to the Prince like that - but JJ just grinned back at him in the flickering glow. "Your honor," Otabek tagged on daringly, with just a tiny crack of a smile, with just a tiny hint of a joke.

"Sure," the Prince said, his smile not fading.

To Otabek's intial surprise, the Prince ended up proving he was indeed a magic-user, to some extent. Still somewhat of a doubter, the day after, when Otabek accompanied the Prince (at his request) to the Engine testing (another failure, and not terribly exciting, since after ignition, the contraption seemed very literally to run out of steam and fail to lift the anvil load it was supposed to) and had JJ staring at the rock in his hand the whole time.

After, JJ had fixed him with a shrewd look and asked him if there was magic "being put" into the stone. Otabek had asked him how he could tell. JJ replied that he could see it going in. Otabek had given him a wry smile and said something to the effect of,  _well, next time you hurt yourself, something needs to do the repairs._ Of course, this resulted in a very curious and talkative Prince, but he had a tea-time formal meeting with some Lords travelling from some other Alnaithean town and had to leave Otabek's company. This, Otabek's company, seemed to be something the Prince was getting quite jealous for.

Otabek could chalk it up to all the new magic-use activity between them. But increasingly, JJ was sending for him, through another degree of separation, to attend to him for riding and breakfast and to get his laundry and common tasks usually lower-level servants would get. He also had thankfully saved Otabek any extra bother with healing him, only needing a large bruise soothed after apparently starting a fight with his dancing partner in lessons over some jibe about his political engagement.

One of the princesses cut her hand on a broken dollhouse and Otabek had to heal that; the next Rise meeting went with no news of the sixth son manifesting any of his prophesied qualities; however, that was now secondary to the growing plans of an uprising. Roles were being assigned; schematic pieced together, skills assessed: who was a strong enough magic user to bring this down, who would comprise the small force to enter the castle and what they should do in the many different cases of the Alnaithean response. The worst case was immediate military retaliation, which they would avoid hopefully by using Otabek's castle plans to quickly get to where the King and Queen were and to force cooperation by capture of the captain chess pieces. Otabek improved rather quickly at swordfighting, in his own eyes; the Prince managed to magically start knocking around a pebble, with a total lack of control, but he was ecstatic about it: his eyes lit up and it amused Otabek to see the harmless childish excitement. They would go riding, and JJ would tell stories into the wind and in the stables, and Otabek's mind would usually wander off to all the responsibilities on his shoulders.

The next week, he fetched (stole) a few ingredients from the greenhouse in the castle grounds and also pocketed a couple of crystals from a private royal order that Mila said were requested by the Qana for the next speaking over the sixth son.

It was the afternoon of the next Rise meeting, the materials sitting safe in the inner pocket of his overcoat, when the Prince had him accompany him on an off-grounds ride, as far as to the white cliffs that were a few miles out of the capital. Lower down on the slopes, the wharfs were busy with fishing boats and cranes, gears cranked by workmen and workwomen, and carts and horses carrying loads to and fro.

The Prince had packed some (squished) biscuits in his saddlebag, and for once all the entrapments of Alnaithean riding style seemed useful as the horses grazed and he and Otabek sat on the grassy ground, looking at the clouds blowing across the late spring blue sky. Otabek had brought his carrier bird, which was presumably off looking for food at the moment.

No one was around for a good distance; they'd ridden far enough. It was curious how they never talked about it, but clearly JJ knew they couldn't sit and talk like this anywhere close to where they could be observed dashing social conventions to the ground.

Somehow JJ bugged Otabek until Otabek started to tell him things about magic. Some old Haqan tales of legendary users; Narit from the northern clan who had been the first sixth son on record and how he had united the magic users of Haqan into one society and introduced a new age, the advent of the different dialects . . . this led to JJ asking what a sixth son was, and Otabek humored him, because it didn't seem like JJ was taking all these tales entirely seriously.

"There's a prophecy," Otabek said.

"Reaaaa _aaaally_?" the Prince responded, mouth half open with half a biscuit inside.

"Close your mouth," Otabek said, making a face. These Alnaitheans! They even needed  _napkins_ at a meal, which were fancy white cloths designed to contain their mess. First of all, white was not the right color for such an application . . .

JJ gulped down his food, chewing and swallowing. However, the valiant effort was negated by his immediately taking another biscuit out of the pack and getting a fresh bite.

"What's it like?" he asked around the pastry. "Who's it for?"

"The one who has all the order of magic written on their soul," Otabek said, playing along, super serious. In truth, he  _was_ super serious about this.

"Yeeaaah? What's it like?" the Prince kept asking and chewing.

Otabek sighed and recited a short Alnaithean translation.

_"Blue as feathered jay_

_The sixth-born son a store_

_Of soul's power to remake_

_The dispersed order whole."_

"What, so this person is all blue?" JJ wrinkled his nose, but at that moment, the materials in Otabek's pocket lost most of their magic and something magical  _definitely_ happened and with a turn in the air - the eyes of the Alnaithean prince Otabek was looking into were no longer both gold, but one was blue like a deep sapphire or the far north mountains on a clear day.

JJ jumped a little bit too.

"Well you asked - this always happens when you say the prophecy," Otabek covered up hurriedly, trying not to appear too shocked himself. "And of course the person isn't  _blue_ \- it is always their eyes, you see." Like one of the Prince's was right now - this didn't make sense - he wasn't Haqan, well,  _barely_ , and only one eye was blue and something must have gone wrong and maybe it was the spell assisting items in Otabek's pocket that were now completely useless.

Just in case, Otabek quickly cast the spell he'd had prepared ever since the first magic/broadsword lesson they'd shared. It had taken quite some effort to prepare, but was a good stop-measure in case he ever had reason to block the Prince's (meagre) magic sight and therefore magic skills. These things were tricky; very tricky; attaching a spell to something that moved was incredibly annoying to draft up and draining to maintain.

Otabek would have to get them back to the castle soon and figure out what the  _hell_ was going on.

At least for now JJ was just looking around.

"Huh ok, well it was weird for a bit," he said. "I've had enough of prophecies anyways. Good stories too."

Otabek nodded and breathed out a sigh of relief as JJ bundled up the cloths he'd taken the biscuits in and made to pack up and leave. He could already feel the drain of maintaining the magic blocking spell on JJ as the Prince started moving about. Oh! And the eye - to mask the deep and startling blue single-sided color to any observer - the ride back was just Otabek maintaining the blocking spell and thinking up a new bit to accomplish the eye-color-mask.

By the time they were back, Otabek managed to ascertain that all JJ was doing for the rest of the day was having a formal dinner and then going to language studies and music for the evening. Then, Otabek hurried back to his healing tower. He had no choice; he had to use one artifact, and later, maybe more, to give himself the energy to keep up the masking spell on the Prince.

He went over the event in his head. He hadn't misspoken anything. The spell in no way would be complete without the right performance; he would've felt better if both of JJ's eyes had turned blue, because that would've meant something had definitely gone wrong. But he'd had a couple of the ingredients in his pocket, and they were now useless (another trip of thievery tonight). And he'd felt it. But it was impossible! Especially since JJ only had four older brothers.

There was no choice; he would have to contact Mila tonight. He needed someone to help him figure this out.

He wrote a short message and sent his carrier bird off.

\-----------------------------------

"That's im _possible_ ," was Mila's first reaction. They met out in the back garden of the family she served. It was quite an extensive lot close to the castle. Water flowed off an aqueduct to supply the pressured watering system.

"I'm telling you, one eye is blue and I barely dragged myself here. I'm exhausted from keeping it up. He can use magic, Mila."

Mila was the best partner Otabek could ask for in this sort of effort. She took him at his word. _Sixth son?_ Mila had raised her eyebrows at this seeming foolishness, but followed it up with the decisive sentiment, _He can use magic? They had better block that._ They spent a good half-hour drafting a better-tailored spell and were just about to cast it when Mila briefly disappeared to her quarters and returned with a slim silver chain having a charm cast in the shape of a feather hanging on it.

"We'll have to fix it. I think we can source some magic from this aqueduct. As long as the watering system works, we can sort the flow and have the supply going constantly."

It was no simple solution but it would work. Otabek well knew they would have to fix something on or close to JJ at all times to save them the physical and mental taxation of constantly focusing on maintaining the spell, even if they did have a source of magic to work the spell itself. But Otabek knew the Prince fairly well by now. He didn't know of anything the Prince constantly wore or had close to him.

"Are you ready?" Mila said, placing the charm on the chain in the center of the glyph they'd dug into the dirt behind the garden gates and lined with focusing objects at points.

"That?" Otabek asked, pointing to the charm.

"Give it to him to wear," Mila said.

"Well," Otabek scoffed. "That won't work!"

"Look, I'll help you cast, fix and source the spell, and you get it on him. That's your problem, going around saying prophecies with half the ingredients in your pocket."

Otabek knew his cheeks were reddening in the moonlight. He didn't have anything to say to that, except, "You yourself said it was impossible."

"I suppose it is not," Mila responded crossly. "But I _highly_ doubt an Alnaithean Prince can be the rightful sixth son. A magic user is what we'll take him for right now."

Otabek wanted to push his point further, but there was no use to discussion right now.

"Any better fix?" was Otabek's last try.

"What, perhaps a pair of pearl earrings?" Mila replied sarcastically.

"The necklace it is," Otabek agreed sourly.

"The feather is made of perinium. It has a very highly capacity. It's the best fix you could ask for. And you had better make sure the Prince doesn't lose it."

After the spellcasting was done, Mila and Otabek stole a few more minutes to discuss the ramifications of this new event. Otabek had another task now: ascertain exactly what had happened and if indeed there was any chance this outsider could be the sixth son. Until then, they had to assume the worst, and contain the knowledge to only themselves. The spell would keep the Prince blind to magic, and therefore unable to use any, and if,  _if_ he happened to be the sixth son, then, Mila said, they could find some way to perhaps redirect his abilities into the hands of a Haqan. If he  _was_ the sixth son, then the only certain thing would be to make sure that the Haqan Rise had him in their control.

Otabek left that meeting with a necklace and a mission.

Oh gods, how was he going to get JJ to wear this?

\-----------------------------------

In the end, pretending it was a gift from someone else or making up some other magical pretense was much too dangerous with all the associated ramifications and endless questions JJ would inevitably ask.

Otabek would have to bite the bit, as they said in Alnaith, and just give it to him. And hope he would wear it.

The next day was pure exhaustion for Otabek to try and keep his makeshift spell up until the clandestine training session that evening. He didn't dare let up his own efforts until the necklace was firmly around JJ's neck, even though when they were in close proximity during the day it would have done the job.

Otabek somehow dragged his feet and arms through broadsword down in the old smithy room, taking a verbal and physical beating from JJ, who seemed to enjoy knocking him onto his ass the first couple times but then gave up and called time for going onto magic time.

Finally! Otabek had to pretend to be surprised when JJ could barely move a pebble. He hoped the Prince would give up soon because the thing that drained him the most was when JJ actually tried to use magic and Otabek had to stop all that.

"It's not working, I can't see it very much today!" JJ exploded, frustrated. He slumped. "Recently I can't see it well. Maybe it was a one-time thing."

He sounded so sad Otabek felt sad for a few moments, but he was really too tired to do more than that.

JJ stood up and sheathed the swords, leaning them against the wall and starting to pace while Otabek sat on the floor, anxious to get the necklace on JJ but at the same time cautiously waiting for the right time that would give him the maximum advantage.

The Prince kept pacing, lips pressed together. Otabek impatiently waited for him to say something. JJ was  _always_ talking. And he picked now to delay the moment.

"Mother's not doing so well," he spit out suddenly, continuining to pace. "She hasn't come to dinner for the last week. I hate having dinner with just Elgred sitting there. Especially when Theo and Alain are there because they just talk about important things and I'm a nobody. No one pays attention to me because I'm never going to have any important responsibilities. Mother was in her room most of today. And most of yesterday. I thought she was weaving or embroidering because she actually likes that kind of thing but when I wanted to come in the servant said she was resting. And when I wanted to come in again one of the nurses was let in but not me. Maybe you can do something," he said, looking at Otabek, expression pulled down with a mixture of frustration and sadness.

Otabek tried to figure out what to say. The next sentence could get him closer to JJ accepting the necklace.

JJ kept going before Otabek could say a word.

"She hasn't been very happy since Father died. Maybe the first few years were OK. But she had a lot of things to do. Now Elgred does most things and most of us are grown up. Nurses watch the princesses all the time. She doesn't do much. She used to go for walks outside. I used to ask her if she wanted to go riding with me since she seemed to spend so much time inside and wasn't really doing anything. But she never wanted to."

JJ looked almost like he was going to cry and it made Otabek feel alarmed.

"You're right, she hasn't travelled to the foreign events that your brothers and Elgred attend," is all Otabek can think to add.

"Right?" the Prince said. He kicked the stone floor. The gas lamp he'd brought this time sat in the corner of the room. "I don't think she's sick, exactly. Or she would be in your wing. Or you would be called already. Do you think you could go anyways? I'll get you there to see her. She doesn't ask for anyone."

"Of course I could go, I do whatever you tell me," Otabek said, no-nonsense.

"Well, you know . . . Sometimes you have to care to do a good job," JJ said with a twisting of his posture to the side.

"Have I not done a good job of guarding you?" Otabek said, pushing himself to his feet.

JJ looked up abruptly.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Yes, I mean. Of course."

Now was the time to strike. Otabek reached his hand in the pocket of his pants, loose till the ankle band. "I have something for you . . . from Haqan," he said, pulling the chain and pendant out, and it flashed in the firelight, and he felt a poke of guilt, but it prodded him to keep speaking, "I put a small spell on it to . . . hopefully, keep you safe," he said. And that was mostly true, was it not? It would keep him safe. Safe, if he was the sixth son, safely where he was supposed to be, under the close watch of the Haqan.

JJ's eyes were wide. He took the necklace from Otabek and looked at it.

"This is . . . really kind of you," he said softly, and deftly unclasped it and put it around his neck, flicking it so it hung hidden under his shirt.

Otabek finally let down his own makeshift spell. He felt almost ten pounds lighter as he let his mind relax; he had almost had a headache from the mental strain; the smile of relief on his face must have showed because the Prince smiled back at him.

"I'm ready for a bit more sword work if you want," Otabek offered.

\-----------------------------------

Later, he took a visit to the library and see if there was anything in the geneaology that could reveal JJ as the sixth son.

The geneaology didn't say anything surprising. From JJ's magic skills, clearly there was Haqan somewhere back in the bloodline, but he had older brothers Theo, Alain, Adam, and Nicolas, and younger sisters Francine and Louise. He was fifth son, and that was that. Well, could there be some strange exception?

And then in the afternoon an Alnaithean servant came to summon him to the Queen's quarters.

He hurried there, taking some of his magical acutrements along with him, stopping to bow to the Lords and other court members he passed closeby on the way.

Outside the carved oak doors of the Queen's quarters, he murmured the reason for his visit to the guards at the door, who admitted him.

The room was hung with colorful tapestries and was large, with mirrors half-draped and the large window curtained with gauze. Colorful, but dim somehow.

Two princes were in attendance and looked up at his presence: JJ, and older brother Adam, who was fairer than JJ with a dust of golden hair and a rather large nose he had gotten from the deceased King. JJ had his mother's nose, neat with an upturn at the end, and a dusting of freckles that came out in the sunlight. Otabek had noticed this, by now.

At the foot of the four poster bed, Otabek stopped to bow and greet the princes: "Your honors," he said, and they acknowledged him with nods. It was strange how this felt like a charade, whenever he and JJ were around anyone else of rank, how they had to resume the role of master and servant.

This was all a cursory relationship, though, of course. Right. But the silver chain still glimmered around JJ's neck before disappearing into the neckline of his embroidered vest and undershirt.

Otabek drew nearer to the Queen's side. She was dressed properly, in a court-appropriate blue dress, and hair pinned back and held in a gold mesh. The covers had yellow roses stitched in them.

"Several doctors have examined her already, but they say there is nothing physically wrong with her," Prince Adam detailed Otabek. "But have a look."

Otabek nodded, glancing briefly at JJ as he sat on the wooden chair by the Queen's bedside. She lay on her back but had one hand laid on her chest and her head turned slighly to the side, eyes half-closed.

"Please talk to her, your honors," Otabek said to the princes, while seeing to the magical diagnosis of her physical condition: there was nothing obviously wrong or hurt.

"Mother," JJ said, taking the initiative while Adam stood back. Adam was eighteen, Otabek knew for a fact from just looking through the geneaologies. On his face was some kind of mature resignation, some kind of stoicism that told this age difference from his brother better than ink on paper could. "Mother, what do you think of going out into the garden today?" JJ took her hand.

Otabek's heart hurt a little bit, or maybe a lot, to see the softness, and what he didn't have himself, and hadn't had since  _she lay cut open and lifeless on the ground of the dead city._

"Not today, Theo," the Queen said, sounding tired.

JJ sighed but kept holding her hand, his gaze down. "Theo's away right now," he said. There was a slight sigh from Adam in the background, again, resignation.

But the Queen didn't reply, just slightly stirred in the covers.

"See?" JJ said, looking at Otabek across the bed.

Otabek was looking at her brain. Looking as best he could at all the intricate magical pathways and where the strands began and went and stuck. He remembered this had happened to several Haqan, when Otabek had still been in the city and had more Haqan friends working in worse conditions. A lot of them had lost a lot of things, and some just weren't the same. Those who seemed changed by the captivity, and for the worse, didn't all act the same; some were angry and some were cold and some were sad, but Otabek practiced the diagnosis and always saw a similar erraticity. The Queen's brain was the same. It was nothing specific, but some of the systems didn't have as much of a magic signature moving around as in any normal, healthy person.

"I have seen this before," Otabek said.

"Oh really?!" JJ perked up. "What is it?"

Otabek shook his head. "I don't know what to do." It wasn't like a broken bone, where the spell to repair the injury was simple and clear-cut. You would have to be a much stronger magic user with an incredible vision to straighten out and set this kind of mind-magic back in order. "It can't be fixed with Haqan ways."

"Really?" JJ said, almost begging. "But you have to try!"

"Jean-Jacques," Prince Adam said quietly as a bit of a reprimand, Otabek gathered.

JJ's face fell.

"You are dismissed," Prince Adam said to Otabek.

"I wish for her majesty's recovery," Otabek bowed, rising. "Your honours," he said, and left the room.

He was only halfway down the hall when JJ stormed past him and thumped down the stairs, running angrily to who-knows-where.

Otabek didn't follow. He knew all too well there was no sufficient consolation anyone could offer.

\-----------------------------------

JJ was much less than his usual vibrant self during the next week or so. Otabek overheared rumors among the castle staff that Her Majestly Queen Nathalie Leroy was not doing so well; she had fallen ill with an incurable sickness, that was the word.

Keeping Otabek's mind off JJ's sad face was the magic collecting he had to do, double time now since using a good portion of his resources on sustaining the makeshift masking spell for JJ. Which at least seemed to be working so far; JJ hadn't taken the necklace off. It was a strange thing and Otabek tried not to dwell on the thought too long, because he felt it might tie him down too strongly to something he would have to let go of. At least, he consoled himself, because of the predicament with JJ maybe being the sixth son (still no evidence one way or the other; the one surefire way would be to take off the necklace and see what he could see and therefore do, but that, of course, was no good course of action for the Haqan Rise), he would still have the Prince close to his care in any case, if his care could be extrapolated to the Haqan Rise's care.

At night, lying awake with all his responsibilities weighing on him, Otabek admitted to himself he had let his friendship with the Prince become - well, just that. And now, here he was, again swearing, nothing more. What more could it be? Otabek wasn't sure, and looking at the necklace around JJ's neck didn't help.

They met up during this course of time in the old smithy once more. JJ held nothing back. He didn't say much. Otabek was able to meet most of his blows. There was something wild and out-of-balance about the Prince, and Otabek knew why. Let it burn and temper, at least, that was what had worked for Otabek. He wasn't sure if JJ could handle himself, though, as they went onto magic and JJ couldn't do a thing. Otabek's insides twisted a bit guiltily as JJ threw the pebble hard across the room and it  _pinged_ into one of the old metal casts.

"Nothing works!" the Prince yelled. He kicked the wall. Otabek let him. If he broke his foot, Otabek would have to fix it. Just yesterday, he patched up a soup burn on his forearm. Some fight with older brothers at the dinner table. That was different, and maybe worse, than usual, where the princesses were the cause of sibling rivalry.

"I'm sorry," Otabek said. He didn't know quite why he said it. JJ turned around, fuming, though not at Otabek.

"Everyone's  _sorry,_ of course they are!" He kicked the wall some more. He grabbed up his forgotten broadsword and started hacking at the corner of the stone wall. Otabek flinched with the noise of metal-on-rock and strengthened the sound barrier spell he'd put up.

Eventually JJ tossed the broadsword on the ground with a clatter. "It's like she's not even  _there!_ She's not even my mother anymore!" JJ yelled, and then looked at Otabek, almost desperately. "She won't eat anything! She just lays there now! What am I supposed to do? What do I do if she dies?" JJ's voice slides up and cracks at this last word and he crumples down to the floor with his face in his hands, body shaking with silent sobs.

Otabek went to sit beside him and waited until he was done, looking up with red eyes and tears smeared on his face, sweaty and messy.

Unexpectedly, JJ asked Otabek, sniffling, "Where's your mother?"

Otabek blinked. "She's dead," he said.

"Oh," JJ said. "How about your father?"

"He's somewhere north. He was sent to a mining camp."

"Oh," JJ said.

They sat there.

"How did she die?" JJ asked.

Otabek let out a breath.

"Do you want to know?" Otabek asked.

"Yes," JJ confirmed.

"We were told the Alnaithean army was coming. That there were a lot of them," Otabek started. "We prepared, we had our best magic-users around the city. We survived the first wave fairly well, they didn't get over our walls; I was still playing gamaane with two of my friends in the basement while that was going on - but then they sent in catapults and launched burning projectiles over and - the walls and ceiling came cracking and crumbling down around us. And then there were soldiers in the streets, white armor, shining swords. There were  _so many._ My dad was a good fighter, but it scared me, as he killed a man to protect us, me and my mother, we were trying to get to a safer place in the center of the city - ." Otabek stretched out his legs, glancing at JJ, who was listening intently. "I remember tripping over debris and looking and it was someone dead, in the dust stirred up by the battle. My mother pulled me. We got to the safehouse. My dad stayed outside to guard the entrance. I remember my mother squeezing me so tightly and singing quietly to me with all the other people in there, but I somehow knew why she was holding me so hard."

Otabek didn't like to tell this story, but it helped, sometimes, to say what really happened, and try to distance himself from the more-awful-still versions that played in his dreams sometimes. "Eventually, it grew quieter and the doors opened. For a moment we thought we were saved. But when I saw my dad, he was at the swordpoint of Alnaithean soldiers, with other of our surviving fighters. They herded us around. We soon figured out they were separating the men from the women and children; I was just a child myself. Then they were putting the women and children up to tests, to see if they were magic users, it turned out. It was crude, how high in the air they could lift this block of an iron gate, and if they couldn't do anything with it, they were prodded over to one section, and if they could, well enough, to another.

"Once everyone figured out what was going on, there was panic, there were families being separated, and anyways, not every good magic user can necessarily lift an iron block high by magic - so the Alnaitheans didn't even know - but the panic grew, and the groups of prisoners erupted again and you had fathers and sons fighting to get back to their mothers and wives and mothers and wives doing the same, and it turned into a - into a bloodbath, and you had people trying to escape, and some surrendering and - I lost my mother for a moment, she couldn't move the block, and when I found her . . . when I found her she was cut open and her skin was lifeless and she was in the dirt and death on the ground."

Otabek bowed his head. "And I don't remember much of what happened after that, except I think I proved I was a magic-user by fending some soldier off, and they took me away."

The wound was old, but it still hurt and Otabek had to clench his teeth and his fist. "Curse the day that your people came to Haqan."

These words are out faster than he can take them back.

Taking some moments to compose himself, Otabek stared at the textured stone under him.

When he looked back up at JJ, there were tears leaking from the Prince's eyes and dripping off his cheeks fresh.

"How could they do that," JJ said, whispered, hoarsely. "How old were you," he said.

"I was 11," Otabek said.

"Then that was Elgred's army. He started the huge military campaign after my mother married him, you know. That was one of the last five battalions. I was at the feast when the Generals came back with the victory. They gave numbers of the people they captured but not the people they killed -" JJ broke off, saying these things as if in a dream. "Everyone celebrated it. It was a holiday. I got the special cake I liked with the red berries in it-"

The Prince stood up, rather aimlessly. He turned and looked at Otabek. He turned and looked at the wall. He started to pace but he stopped.

"We should go," he told Otabek.

Otabek nodded and stood.

As they walked back through the underground tunnels, the Prince still seemed to be lost in some kind of haze.

Otabek wondered if he'd gone too far.

If he had, then there was something he should ask as soon as possible.

"You only have four brothers, right?" Otabek asked JJ as they almost reached the point where they would go their separate ways.

"Oh?" JJ turned and looked back at him. "Oh. Yes. No. Well, my mother had Gabriel. He caught a sickness in the lungs when he was three months old. I never met him. That's back when my father was still alive . . . . He would have been between Alain and Theo."

JJ turned back around. "Mother never talked about it, though. I only know because Adam told me. Not even the princesses know."

Otabek sucked in a breath.

Then, they indeed had a sixth son on their hands.

\-----------------------------------

The next day, the Prince never once summoned him. Otabek had enough to do before the meeting. When he stole away to the old cellar in the middle of the night, he was able to deliver enough magic stored in various items to make the plan of collapse feasible.

He entered already into a heated discussion between Mila and several of the other Haqan leading the coup.

"We need to try now! We need to put this into action as soon as possible, before we can't anymore!"

"That's assuming no sixth son."

"We have a sixth son, and he's no sixth son!"

Mila noticed Otabek entering and looked up. They shared a glance. They had not yet told everyone about the Prince and the chance he was the sixth son. The Speaking still had not succeeded.

Otabek drew near to Mila's side. Usually, this quieted the gathered group, but not tonight.

Quietly, Otabek whispered his news to Mila, who then exerted herself to get the meeting going.

After the cheers and chants for getting the offensive going, now that it was all planned and everyone had their tasks and positions and times and equipment, which Mila acknowledged, she turned to Otabek and said,

"We have some new information, though."

Apparently it was Otabek's job to inform.

He cleared his throat.

"The sixth son may  _not_ be the son of the Qana," he said, instigating some wondering murmurings from the gathered crowd: all with hair shaved at the side, with the cheekbones of the Haqan, gathered and united, instilling pride in Otabek's chest he couldn't match by any solo effort. "I . . . had some spell materials in a pocket, spoke the prophecy in passing to a member of the royalty, and one of his eyes turned blue."

Mila and Otabek had to quiet the crowd.

"Now, he has no idea, and no one can tell; if he _is_ , in fact, the sixth son -- but we placed a protective spell on him," Mila explained. "In case."

"At any rate, he  _can_ use magic, that is, without the blocking spell," Otabek finished.

"What? An Alnaithean?"

"There are only five princes and five sons!"

"We'll have to take him in at once!"

"I don't believe it."

"That's just ludicrous!"

Ten or fifteen minutes of hard discussion followed. The facts were straightened out. The benefits and costs of all plans were laid out. In the end, it came down to whether to carry out the coup as planned and take JJ captive, or to work with the supposed sixth son to try and restore order and  _then_ plot a coup.

"Well we can't trust an Alnaithean."

"He will have to be taken captive. Forget about this sixth son business. One blue eye doesn't mean anything."

"The point is to oust the royalty by our own hand, not depend on them for our triumph!"

Mila looked at Otabek in the midst of this. "It would be a terrible judgement call to place hope in who is, for all intents and purposes, the enemy, no matter how comfortable your servitude is under him," she said, like confirming a covenant.

Otabek thought back to the conversation about his mother's death last night. How the Prince didn't summon him once all day. He might have indeed gone too far. But then had the tears on JJ's face been some kind of lie?

"I'll make sure he's taken during the coup," is what Otabek said.

Mila looked satisfied. She turned back to the group at large.

Now it was just a question of when.

Which was easily decided. The longer they waited, the less chance they had for success.

Two nights from now was the decision.

Heading back, Otabek felt less triumphant than the ending cheers had been to dismiss the gathering. They were treating JJ like a pawn in the game of the Haqan Rise, a game they would win, putting the necklace on him  _for safety_ , when his mother was bedridden, taking the capital like that - what would they do with the sixth son, when they had him, at swordpoint, like Otabek's mother and father had been?

In the end, Otabek told himself that this was silliness. He had gotten too comfortable. Alnaithean Prince Jean-Jacques Leroy would not care (too much) if Otabek vanished from his life, and Otabek then did not have to care if JJ vanished from his. Except, of course, he would still be there, and he might look at Otabek questioningly and angrily and if he didn't say,  _you betrayed me!,_ then Otabek would tell himself so, as they wrote the whole spell and turned both his eyes blue and did whatever it took to use him to restore the order.

Just before Otabek snuck back in the east garden gate of the castle walls, he heard a scuffle in the Orisian Olive bushes. But it was very quiet, and a squirrel could have made the sound, so he ignored it.

\-----------------------------------

When Otabek woke up the next morning, the squirrel-sound was only louder in his ears. His mind rushed to the worst conclusion. It wrung his mind dry while, yet again, the Prince did not send for him.

Did JJ follow him?

Would JJ betray  _him_ before Otabek could make  _vice versa_ happen?

Having made all final preparations, circulating to check planned entry routes were not blocked as often as he could without arousing suspicion, Otabek finally, in the afternoon, sat down at his desk in the healing wing and wrote a message to Mila.

 _Feather may have followed,_ he began. She would know  _feather_ is JJ. They might need to take him in sooner than later. Before he could ruin things. They could take him from - well, he had music after supper, and then he might go riding, taking the winding northeast path; but lately he hadn't been riding; so then he might, likely, go to his quarters, or go to check on the princesses.

Half an hour later the message was written and sitting on the desk. Otabek had his head in his hands at the desk, pulling his hair.

Eventually Otabek started writing something else.

 _Here is more about the feather I haven't said. Prince Jean-Jacques Leroy has always been a handful. But he's older now. He's lost some of the foolhardyness, but not any of the fun. He talks and laughs. He has a lack of care for important things, in general, that make him easy to be around. He's dedicated to what he decides to do; he gets up in the middle of the night every five days to practice magic_  (a bit of guilt stabbed Otabek there)  _and broadsword fighting. I've known him for a while and he enjoys my company. I enjoy his. He's tall, and he has dark eyebrows and a nose that slants up a bit at the end, which you might have known, and seasonal freckles. He's stronger than he looks, too. I gave him a necklace and I was worried if he would wear it, but he did, without question, and I don't believe he's ever taken it off. Recently his mother's been sick in the way you can't fix and it has made him very sad. I don't like to know that he is so sad, but I know how he feels, and I feel for him. He hasn't been calling for my attendance as of late, but he has consistently in the past. He would get me to deliver him food or clothes. He would take me out riding along with him and we would go somewhere where we could talk as friends. Sometimes the way he looks at me makes me wonder_

There, Otabek's writing stopped, and he shoved both composed notes off the desk, beginning another, writing quickly and with a purpose, dipping the pen sharply in the inkwell.

 _Usual time usual place was_  all the note said. He gave it to his carrier bird, taking it from the cage. With the messenger perched on his arm-sleeve, he descended the stairs, going to send the note off outside and then have some dinner.

Just as he had gotten out into the fresh air and the bird had taken off, a Haqan servant, coal-dusted from working with the Engine, put a scrap of paper in his hand and then turned and ran back away.

Otabek unfolded it.

 _Be at the smithy at 11:30 evening,_ it read, in familiar print.

\-----------------------------------

Otabek was at the usual place, an earlier time, with his stomach unsettled. He lit the fire around the smithy and waited.

He didn't know why JJ had called him there. He had a common-sense feeling that told him he should be wary. He was ready to . . . well, he was ready for JJ to be angry at him. This is what would have happened: JJ would have followed him out and seen he was planning some kind of uprising. He would realize, or think, that all Otabek had done, that everything they'd done together that had drawn them so close, was all just a plan. Otabek was sure JJ wouldn't do anything to physically harm him. But he wouldn't be happy. Rightly so. And Otabek would have to be strong, and play the part, and . . . and, he was supposed to have called in Mila for support, but he could always take JJ out with a quick knockout spell and haul him away and - well, he told himself this is what he could do.

This was for his people. For his family.

But what would his mother have wanted? Vengeance? Or for her son to find someone who . . .

Otabek jolted as JJ entered, holding a gas lamp.

He couldn't speak for a solid half-minute.

JJ stopped there in the doorway, after he'd closed it, with a strong upper lip and standing straight, oddly enough looking like a boy who wants approval from his father.

He had shaven his chin-length black hair clean off both sides and there was just the length left down the top middle. Like a Haqan.  _Like a Haqan._

Like this, there was something strong and sharp about his brow and his jaw and the determined set of his lips.

"What did you . . . " Otabek said.

"I want to join you," JJ said.

Otabek, again, searched for words.

Instead, he found himself walking forward, until he was close enough and reached his hand up into JJ's hair and stroked back the undercut and ran his palm down the stubbly side, to see if it was real. It was.

"My mother . . . they found her in her washroom this evening, she poisoned herself," JJ said.

Otabek still couldn't say anything.

JJ dropped his gaze, and then gathered it back up again.

"I had decided before, though. I followed you to your meeting. I saw all of you and talking and cheering at the end. I . . . I . . . all my brothers want to do is manage land and make money and take things from people, but you've had things taken from you, and you're doing a damn better job of everything than anyone else I know so - and - and I'm  _so sorry for your mother Otabek and I wish -_ " JJ rubbed his hands down his face. "And my mother's dead now too-" But somehow he choked off any tears and looked back at Otabek and swallowed. "Can I join you," he said.

Otabek realized, in that moment, he didn't have any more choices left to make.

He reached for JJ's neck and hooked the necklace out, the silver chain with the feather, and with a clean  _snap_ yanked it off and tossed it to the other side of the room, the very far diagonal corner.

"What-" JJ started. "Wait, it's weird - it's weird again -"

Otabek watched as JJ's one eye started turning a bright and deep blue, the Prince looking around.

"- It's like when we went riding and you told me the prophecy you had and - " JJ frowned. "Wait, I can see magic again. I can see a lot more - " He blinked and looked back at Otabek. "It makes me dizzy. What is . . . " He gestured at the necklace.

"I told Mila, who leads the Rise with me, that I believe you're the sixth son in the prophecy," Otabek told JJ.

"What?" JJ wrinkled his nose, still glancing around and blinking as if dizzy. "But that's for you guys, Haqan - "

"One of your eyes is blue."

"What?"

"One of your eyes turned blue when I said the prophecy. I had some of the ingredients in my pocket - it wasn't the complete spell, but we're pretty sure-"

"One of my  _eyes is blue?!_ Oh boy! I always wanted blue eyes!" JJ exclaimed.

Otabek snorted a laugh. And then remembered the necklace. "So I gave you the necklace to make your eyes seem normal."

"Wait. If I'm the sixth son . . . why didn't you ask me to join you . . . " JJ trailed off.

"Well . . . " Otabek said. "I also gave you the necklace to block your magic abilities . . . "

"You didn't trust me," JJ said.

Otabek couldn't look at him.

"I get it," JJ said sadly. Otabek jerked his gaze back up in surprise. "I mean . . . I . . . we . . . , well it's our fault for . . . well, your mother and father," JJ finished, but it was enough to explain.

They stood there for some seconds.

"So you asked me to meet you here?" JJ resumed. "Because you guys finally want me to -"

"Actually, I wasn't supposed to meet you. Mila doesn't know. She doesn't really think you're the sixth son, either. They decided to go ahead with the coup." Otabek couldn't stop looking at JJ, with his split eyes and his Haqan hair. "And . . . take you for later."

"A coup? Can you ask them? I'll go with you. I'm on your side. I promise. Just don't . . . I mean, my family . . . Well, Theo's away, but everyone else . . . "

"No, we won't spill any blood," Otabek said determinedly.

"OK. So . . . let's go ask them."

"Mila could still want to . . . take you, and keep you hostage, so maybe I should go alone-"

"No! If I go with you it'll show I'm on your side. She can take me hostage, I don't care. I'll go along with the plan. Hey, it means I don't have to marry that girl from Xang! What does the sixth son do anyways?" JJ said breathlessly.

Otabek laughed shortly. "Well, the sixth son restores the order of magic."

"Oh," JJ said. "OK," he said, cheerily.

It made Otabek half-smile.

"Why do you trust me?" JJ asked almost shyly after a breath of a pause.

It wasn't obvious? It wasn't obvious. Well, it wasn't entirely obvious to Otabek himself.

"No normal Alnaithean prince would give themselves that haircut. The second anyone sees you - well, they'll think you were attacked, they'll lock you in a room until it all grows back," Otabek replied.

JJ laughed, fingers going through his hair. "It feels strange," he admitted. "But really. I mean, sure, we're more friends than we're allowed to be, but still, you came here to tell me I'm some prophecy kid, giving me the chance to run away and give away your whole plan?"

"I could take you out before you could blink," Otabek said menacingly, then broke character with a grin.

For some reason they were both standing around when they could have been on the move already.

"Because I just do," Otabek blurted. "Trust you."

Somehow, JJ had leaned in closer and they were toe-to-toe.

"I trust you too. And I like your eyes. And I like your face and your tattoo and your voice and when you're with me . . . " JJ fades to a mumble with his hand on the side of Otabek's cheek so Otabek's skin heats up.

"So I wondered," Otabek said in a breath, more to himself.

"Huh?"

And that was the perfect opportunity to kiss the Prince, and the perfect start to whatever would come of the coup and Otabek and the sixth son.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wrote this in an afternoon what is my life


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i lived, bitch!!!!!!

Although all gates were locked – the groundskeepers must have been doing their jobs that day – it didn’t take long to climb out over the furnace room. It turned out JJ came prepared, with a sack of random food; his broadsword was already stowed in their meeting place, and Otabek nabbed a crossbow from the weapons room. Then they were off.  They hiked out quickly, in relative silence, with Otabek steering them towards the gardened acre of the mansion of a house where Mila served, booted feet soft in the grass, straying from cobbled pathways.

“I got money too,” JJ whispered to Otabek, following close behind; Otabek glanced backwards, still taken aback by his hair and the split-eyed gaze.

“Good,” Otabek replied, continuing on ahead. He had the perinium necklace in one hand, and it was going to be a little rude to hand it back to Mila with a busted chain after they spent work on fastening that spell. Spells were just particular gatherings of magic, though, so it wasn’t like you could waste it; but once you loosened the magic from the spell it would all flow back into the surroundings, into Order it was supposed to be, and you lost all the effort you put in to make it so complicated in the first place.

The Order itself was the strongest, deepest, most stable of all spells known, an undercurrent beneath all the tiny works of Haqan magickers that was responsible for pulling magic into place, herding it and shaping it when it was not being used otherwise. Otabek found his thoughts straying back to what little he could remember of tales from when he was a child. The goddess Pel had formed the earth and set it into Order, and out of all the peoples, Pel chose Haqan to entrust with the gift of wielding magic. But, as usually happens when you give someone a little too much power, they were wicked with it, and cared nothing for life, taking magic from other people, which was, of course, equivalent to taking life.

Even now, every Haqan child passed through a swearing-in where they agreed to abide by the code of magic use set in place to make sure death on that scale never happened again. From time to time, there had been outliers, but alone, one magicker with ill intent could not do much. Although living beings, especially humans, were the most concentrated sources of magic, in a world of bricks and air and still waters, it was so bound to them that even if one should try to take another’s magic, harvest from such a gold mine, it was a daunting task, and if achieved, would most certainly kill the human who then had no magic remaining.

Otabek knew he would have to teach JJ all this, and quickly. Mila’s house was visible in the moonlight up ahead. Mila, with her doubts. Otabek had his own, true, but JJ had to be the sixth son; there was too much in his favor. What stories did Otabek remember about the sixth sons, besides that they were chosen by Pel to right the Order whenever it was shaken? He recalled an illustration or two from a book, one sixth son born across the ocean who had to journey back, achieving a triumphant return to the capital. Was that the end of the story? The sixth son had to restore the Order . . . Otabek realized just how _long_ he had been immersed in Alnaithean culture, then. He knew their fables better than those of his heritage; many about ridiculously admired _dragon-slayers,_ but of course, those were just the karcharoa beasts that nested in the coastline mountain range, if you went far enough north.  Haqan would hunt them once in a while for delicacies (and the stores of magic-holding objects they would gather, mostly, from failed Alnaithean attempts at slaying them). It was quite simple, really, rub the oil of the point-herb into the coats of the mountain goats the karcharoa liked to eat, and the _dragon_ would be down and out as soon as he went for that meal. Only a stupid man would try to hack through a karcharo’s thick hide with a sword.

By then, they had reached the garden, climbed over the stone-cemented wall, and crept to the small outbuilding where Mila slept.

Otabek pressed his palm to the door and sent a quick twist of magic inside the room to wake her.

JJ shuffled in the grass beside him. Crickets chirped in the garden. “This seeing thing . . . I’m still dizzy,” JJ said. “I can see all the magic, but even if I close the other eye my head still hurts . . . “

Otabek was about to reply, but Mila opened the door. Her hair was braided back down the center even at night.

Quickly, Otabek explained in Haqan what had passed, and then stepped aside to let her get a good look at JJ, who squared his shoulders for inspection.

Mila motioned to his hair and asked Otabek what happened. _He wants to join us,_ is all Otabek said.

“What can you do?” Mila said, crossing her arms, to JJ. She was apparently completely unperturbed by the fact that an Alnaithean prince was currently at the mercy of a simple Haqan servant. This, Otabek admired. She had never thought of herself as any less, despite her position in life, he thought.

“Uh, for magic?” JJ said. “Well – “

Mila explained that there was no one around, so they were safe, and they went to the vegetable plots, shielded from the west by tall flowering Haqan artichokes, at least.

“I have my doubts that you are the sixth son,” Mila told JJ bluntly. “A translated spell, half the ingredients, one eye blue: it seems like only a botched Speaking to me.” She side-eyed Otabek, who looked at a small weed in the middle of the garden.

“You missed one,” he muttered, bending down to pluck it out while Mila inspected JJ: magic sight.

“But if you have mastered magic, I will reconsider,” she finished, and then told him to single out a particular gourd and gather all of that type in the garden to a pile in this clearing between the rows of corn.

“I can move things, but I can’t – “ JJ started, holding the gourd Mila had handed him and turning it over in his hands. He looked like he was concentrating. “I can see that there are others . . . my head hurts, I’ve been dizzy since Otabek took the necklace off,” he said. “I can’t,” he said, taking his hands from the gourd, which lowered itself to the ground. “Only like that. But I can see there are others! But I, hm, I feel dizzy . . . “

Otabek swallowed. He had been expecting more from JJ with the necklace off. He’d thought this would be a breeze.

Mila raised an eyebrow. “Can you at least find the others and raise them up, then, if not gather them?”

JJ squinted and Otabek could _tell_ he was using his sight to find them, but his focus, evidenced by the magic beginning to order itself strategically through the garden, shook and dropped. There was only a bit of shaking in the bushes off to their right as he succeeded at knocking one gourd up into the air, which then fell flat – _thump!_ – on a patch of flowers.

He put his head in his hands. “That’s all I can try, my head hurts,” he said. “If you finish the spell – please, please let me join you – I’ll get better at it, I want to help.” JJ was nothing if not determined.

Mila shook her head.

“He’s no use to us. The coup is planned. You messed up the spell,” she said to Otabek in Haqan.

Otabek felt uneasy. “I still think he could be the sixth son. The spell isn’t finished! It _is_ my fault, but at least we have to try completing it.”

“Otabek, he’s not doing any more than we ourselves can do,” Mila argued. “Even at half-strength, the sixth son would be _much more_ than this.”

Otabek shook his head but had nothing to say to that. She was right.

“I can’t investigate the botched spell you cast, but if the Alnaithean prince does have a speck of Haqan blood in him, I would bet that all it did was turn an eye blue and amplify his scarce ability to use magic.”

JJ stood there, clearly not understanding a word, but the tone was clear.

“At least . . . at least let us try to finish the Speaking. I have the new spell ingredients, too,” Otabek said, patting the bag around his shoulders.

Mila looked to be thinking for some moments.

“All right. You will head to the encampment. I have a spell that will show your bird the way. Go as fast as you can, because if the prince isn’t the sixth son, the true sixth son will need it. I will carry out the coup here.”

Otabek blinked. “But you need me to get inside the . . . “

“We will figure something else out. A couple of days’ delay is all it will cost us.” Mila grinned confidently.

“Ok, but still make sure you don’t harm any of the royal family,” Otabek frowned.

“We will use no human life to take magic,” Mila assured him. “You shouldn’t be worried,” she said teasingly. “You are fond of the prince, I see.”

“He’s been a friend to me,” Otabek said, a bit stiffly.

“Mmhmm, so don’t become blindsided,” Mila said, more warningly. “Keep the necklace if he has a headache; the spell should last for a couple of days at least,” she finished, more kindly.

Otabek turned to JJ, switching back to Alnaith, and explained the plan.

Directions to the stables, a couple of stolen horses later, and they were on the northern road out of the city.

 

* * *

 

 

Clear and weak morning light was beginning to filter up through the clouded horizon as Otabek and JJ slowed. They had followed Spire Road up to the junction that met two important routes; onwards more to the next junction north, and then they would be going northeast through brushland and forest, hills increasing as they neared the mountains.

Now they had crested the last hill from where you would be able to see the capital of Alnaith spread out in full.

JJ turned back in his saddle.

“What was she saying back there?” he asked Otabek, looking out over his city.

“The plan?”

“Besides that. She doesn’t think I’m a real magic user, does she? Or that I’m the sixth son?”

Otabek shook his head.

“Do you think I could have the necklace again? I’m still dizzy and got a headache. I swear, I can see lots of magic but . . . I try to look at more than one thing and I can’t, it’s just like I can’t hold it.”

Otabek reined his horse close in to JJ and knotted the charm on its broken chain through a vest loophole.

“Better,” JJ said. “But not great.”

His eyes still flickered half-gold, half-blue. “Yes, unfortunately the spell’s running out,” Otabek told him.

“So – do _you_ still think I’m the sixth son?” JJ asked.

“We’ll find out,” Otabek said. Mila’s doubts had been circling in his mind, taking root. Then, as they turned around to keep going, “It doesn’t matter to me, though, so long as we find out together.”

“I still hope I am, ‘cause you don’t have another one, right?” JJ said.

Otabek shook his head and they kicked their horses to a faster pace, only glancing back to make sure JJ was following; which he was, with a silent wave backwards to his city, family, home.

 

* * *

 

 

Somewhere into the middle of the morning, Otabek and JJ had to work out a bit of a masking spell for JJ, should they come close to other travelers. Even with an eye blue and Haqan hair, the Prince’s face stayed the Prince’s face. Instead, they determined that he should look like a Lord’s son, out for a ride to visit someone in a northern town with his servant.

JJ tried to fix the magic on himself, with Otabek’s encouragement; he managed to do it, but not for longer than several seconds. _I’m going to throw up if I try to see everything and keep it there for any longer,_ he told Otabek.

Several seconds would have to do. They were going fast anyways.

While riding, Otabek let his mind wander to what other stories he could remember from his childhood about the sixth son. To him, the sixth son had always vaguely seemed like a burning hero, sparking fast and leaving just an echoing _bang_ across history’s pages. He tried to remember why, through his mother’s and father’s eyes and voices that were so faint in his memory by now.

 

* * *

 

 

Following Otabek’s bird, which he had explained to JJ was quite similar to what Alnaitheans called a _red-tailed hawk_ , two solid days of travelling passed with no mishaps. They stayed in small hostels, most with a bar downstairs and a few rooms upstairs. Clearly, bunking in normal quarters, with less-than-fancy and less-than-clean furniture and amenities, was quite the experience for JJ, but he didn’t make more than a single comment (that single comment was about the washrooms, and made rightly so).

“I have lots of money for two rooms,” JJ said the first night as they rolled into the same bed, same room. At least they had showered, but there was no time or energy to get their clothes washed and wait for them to dry.

Otabek’s light undertunic was fine for sleeping, but JJ had only brought those ridiculous white quilted under garments; well, it was what all royalty wore.

Otabek had started outright laughing at him when he came out with those on, and JJ had looked offended, before unbuttoning and pulling the shirt part off, and sliding into bed bare-chested. He looked at Otabek through those lashes, split-colored gaze; he’d managed to magic the necklace back around his neck, and it dangled as he leaned over Otabek, though the spell was on its last legs and would likely be useless by morning. The look said, playfully, _follow suit!_ so Otabek figured he may as well save as many clothes for the actual journey as possible, and did as suggested.

“If we need to leave quickly in the middle of the night, two rooms is not strategic at all,” Otabek had said to JJ.

“Oh, of course,” JJ had replied, unbraiding Otabek’s hair and playing with it.

Exhausted from the day’s travels, they fell asleep together, nothing more, nothing less.

 

* * *

 

 

In the middle of the night, Otabek woke up suddenly, from a dream that had become too real.

He had lived through the fables again, the stories he knew as a child, his mother had told him the story.

JJ was snoring a little, right next to him, on the (uncomfortable) bed. Otabek looked at the sleeping prince.

Now Otabek’s gut turned inside of him. Now, he hoped Mila was right. Now, he would have to tell JJ, in case he _should be_ the sixth son.

 

* * *

 

 

In the morning, it was just get-up-and-go. If they made a good pace, it would be only three more days until they reached the encampment; whether they could keep that up was yet to be seen. There was a fairly large Alnaithean city coming up, Berstile, through which passed a lot of traffic due to the Noroway Bay docks and roads leading through it. It took the larger part of the day to get there.

Otabek and JJ agreed they were far enough north that they only had to color change JJ’s eyes to brown and that should do it for a disguise. Even this, however, proved strenuous for JJ, and as they guided their horses through the bustling main streets, alongside other pedestrians, carts and wagons and even old boats being pulled along, he had to stop to throw up in a sewer.

That was that: JJ was exhausted, not to mention likely still processing his mother’s death and the chance that he could be the sixth son and everything that was happening. They had to stop and find somewhere to rest for a bit. Besides, Otabek had to talk with him, had to tell him – though he didn’t know how to start, or maybe was too afraid to. But just as Otabek sighted an inn that advertised stabling area for horses (and a good deal on ale) there was shrill fanfare and shouting; the crowd started to press them to the sides of the streets.

“Xang,” JJ said, pointing at the flag, red triangle with a gold sun. A procession headed down the road; not a war procession. There were people on horses with white coats, longer fur; they themselves wore reds, golds and pinks, and black hair shining that looked like it had been molded in a certain way for the occasion.

Alnaitheans lining the streets leaned close into the path to have a good look at the foreigners, who must have landed at Noroway docks earlier. The main attraction, it seemed, was a man and a girl, looking about 15 or 16, riding in a sleek ornamented carriage.

“Your eyes?” Otabek asked JJ, but he was staring at the girl.

“I’m supposed to get _married_ to her,” JJ blurted, still looking; the carriage was coming down the street, near level with them.

“Your eyes!” Otabek yelled at JJ.

“Oh – right,” JJ said, tapping his head in a _silly-me_ kind of way; and his split gaze returned to a single color.

“Other color, _chtalo!_ ” Otabek hissed at those two golden eyes, which were once again fixed on the girl in the carriage. No time; he had to do the spell himself; but it was a bit of difficult thing and he wasn’t sure if JJ’s eyes returned to a plain brown by the time the girl had looked back, double-take as her carriage passed.

Fed up, tired and now alarmed, Otabek grabbed JJ’s sleeve and dragged him into the inn they’d stopped outside and only just finishing tying their horses up to. JJ was still glancing back over his shoulder at the retreating party as normal business of the town folded back in the wake of the procession.

“Did you see? That’s Isabella! She’s on her way! They’re going to –”

“What happened to your headache,” Otabek muttered as they made their way through the wooden tables towards the counter, where the keeper was smoking something at the counter while stacking coins.

“It still hurts of course,” JJ said. “Do you think they’ve started the coup? Do they know? They’ll have to turn around,” he continued.

“And we have to make it to the encampment,” Otabek reminded JJ.

“Right,” JJ said, seeming to catch up, and also seeming to remember he was the master and Otabek was the servant, as the innkeeper gave them a funny eye. Resuming his mantle, JJ strode to the counter and paid for their stay, horses as well. All his princely training gave him the perfect arrogant air; he was a privileged Alnaithean boy, likely the son of the Lord. In fact, that was what Otabek heard JJ spinning lies about to the innkeeper, striking up a short conversation.

“Come,” JJ said, with a wink though as he faced away from the innkeeper, key in hand, and they went up the creaky stairs to find their room, Otabek hefting the pack off the horses that contained what things they’d deemed necessary.

 

* * *

 

 

Three hours later, they had eaten, and Otabek had been somehow convinced to go along with a stupid, _risky_ plan that was exactly JJ’s style of doing things. Which was? Going to the Lord’s house in Bestile, where certainly the party from Xang would be staying the night, find the assumed princess Isabella’s room, and explain what exactly was happening.

(It was better than talking to JJ about what would befall him if he were the sixth son. Which he couldn’t be. This, Otabek told himself.)

JJ had somehow won him over to this plan. _I owe it to her! She expects me to be there and there to be this huge wedding! Wouldn’t you want the relief of knowing that it was all off anyways ‘cause your groom’s running away? Anyways, I’m sure she recognized me. If we go talk to her before she mentions it to someone, maybe she’ll keep quiet. Right? What happens if they get to capital, the coup’s happened, they want to know where I am and_ then _Isabella speaks up?_

After this, Otabek determined, he’d muster the nerve to talk to JJ about the whole sixth son thing.

With a simple distraction from Otabek’s hawk, the two managed to slip in through the main gates. Otabek had asked earlier if JJ was feeling well enough to keep up the masking spell, and he’d nodded with the stubbornness of the prince Otabek’s known for years.

Warm light came through the tall windows of the great hall. They crept through the manicured bush mazes to get close and see what was happening inside. Otabek wrinkled his nose; there was definitely fresh fertilizer on the grounds.

When they got close enough to the first window, JJ made some random hand signals at Otabek, which he took as _stay back_ , and before Otabek could argue that, no it should be _Otabek_ going to spy, he had ducked up to the window ledge and peeked over.

Scurrying back to Otabek’s bush, JJ informed him that the party inside, Xang royals and host Alnaithean Lords, were having a feast.

“Great, how long before they’re done?”

“Longer than I can keep my eyes normal,” JJ said; even as he said this, one eye appeared to flicker gold for some seconds and he squinted, rubbing his temples.

“This is such a stupid plan,” Otabek sighed.

“Really it is,” someone said and both JJ and Otabek whirled around, Otabek automatically drawing on the brackets on his belt to produce a quick buffering blast at whoever had snuck up on them, crouched as they were.

Of course, the _whoever_ was the princess, who let out a short _yelp._

“Aha! I knew it was you,” she said in accented Alnaithean, dusting herself off, jabbing a finger at Jean.

“Me?” he said, but Otabek could see that he had dropped the spell on his eyes.

“They made those painting of you too nice,” she continued. “Your hair is like your servant.”

“He thinks it looks good,” JJ said indignantly. “Right, Otabek?”

“Why are you here looking for me? Are you trying to kidnap me before the wedding?” Isabella cut him off. Her _th_ ’s were clipped, pronounced more like _d_.

“No, we just wanted to tell you we’re running away. ‘Cause I _might_ be part of a magic prophecy.”

The princess wrinkled her nose. Otabek could see she had blue eyes, even in the evening light, but they were not as potent blue as JJ’s one blue eye. She was wearing a fancy red draping dress that probably had grass stains by now. Her face shape was lovely and her black hair was cut sharply, small gold earrings glinting. Otabek had a fleeting thought that this was his competition.

“Also, don’t be surprised if you have to go back to Xang. I think someone’s going to attack the capital,” JJ told her.

“I hope so, I hate going on these trip,” she said. “I don’t want to marry you anyways,” she said happily.

JJ wrinkled his nose. “Well good then,” he said. “Well, we have to go soon. Don’t tell anyone, alright? Sorry for the bother.”

“OK. Have fun being magic,” she said.

“Wait, are there magic users in Xang?” Otabek had to ask before Isabella left.

She gave Otabek a look, then JJ, as if waiting for his approval to speak to his servant. JJ nodded.

“They say that when the avalanche and snowstorm come, that it is unnatural,” she said. “But we can’t do anything. Some people try to make enchantment, but I think they forgot how a long time ago.”

“Hm,” Otabek said.

“Bye,” Isabella said.

“Bye,” JJ said.

Then, the Xang princess was gone.

 JJ sighed into the evening air. “My head hurts a lot,” he said.

The hubbub coming from the city, a five-minute walk back south, was quieter, dying down minute by minute.

“She’s very beautiful,” Otabek commented as they mutually started threading their way back how they came.

“Yes, but,” JJ scoffed, “but you’re . . . I like you _so much more_ ,” JJ snorted and took his hand, squeezed their palms together.

 

* * *

 

 

“Three more days’ riding? Two?” JJ said, lying in bed and waiting for Otabek to finish packing their things for the next day.

“Yes,” Otabek said. He neared the bed. It was one of the nicer ones they’d had to stay in. “JJ, I’ve been busy trying to remember more about the sixth son. I think I did.”

“Yes? Do they all have terrible headaches?” JJ put a forearm over his forehead. “I can’t seem to make it better. If I try, it makes it worse. Could you try?”

Otabek couldn’t say no. It was so much like back in the castle, JJ lying there and Otabek diagnosing him. Curiously, JJ had never had any serious head injuries, so Otabek had never tried to see all the complexities in his mind, like he had with JJ’s mother. He laid a hand on the side of JJ’s head and mustered up as much sight as he could; every day that went by, it was too painfully clear that he was slowly losing his scope of vision, as the Order decayed further and further. When they ate downstairs earlier, they had heard talk of dead deer being found in the border of the forest, inexplicable, dying trees too. Otabek knew the reason.

There was nothing obviously wrong with JJ’s head and all the complexities, layers of structures and magic and workings. Everything moved quickly. Otabek concentrated, kept his focus, tried to follow some lightning paths of thoughts. Some broke off, jumped tracks before they reached their terminal station, which seemed strange – but deeper, there was something his sight touched, something he couldn’t interpret and it scared him – he broke his investigation.

“That was long,” JJ said.

“I – don’t know if you’re the sixth son,” Otabek said.

“How about my headache?”

Otabek shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t think I’d dare to touch that without risking damaging something.”

JJ nodded, still lying down, with a groan. “Terrible,” he said.

Otabek sat down next to him, weight pressing into the bed.

“I still can’t believe Mother is dead,” JJ said. “But – I’m glad we’re going somewhere, doing something, I don’t know what I would do otherwise.”

Otabek’s hand found JJ’s and they remained like that for a little while, even though they should have been sleeping.

“JJ, I told you I’d been remembering about the sixth son. Which you might not be. I can’t . . . say for sure. I don’t think you are, you can’t be. Mila’s right . . .” Otabek trailed, wrestling with what he saw in JJ, some kind of ability that seemed to say there _was_ something supernatural there. It couldn’t mean anything, though. It must have been a result of the botched spell. JJ had shown, so far, a marked lack of magical control. The half-spell must have just _done this to him_ and he was no sixth son at all. Mila knew best, and it made sense. Since when had an Alnaithean-born been a magic user? _No, this – JJ cannot be the sixth son._

JJ sat up, looking a bit hurt. “But I thought you were sure –”

“I’ve become too Alnaithean for my liking, and forgotten the tales and stories of Haqan I learned as a child,” Otabek said.

JJ frowned, apparently not listening to Otabek at all. “Just ‘cause I have a _terrible_ headache when I try to keep up all this magic-seeing and I can’t seem to focus on anything long enough to do any good – well I should get better at it, I imagine, after the Speaking spell – the rest of it --”

“No!” Otabek cut him off, tone sharp in the room. “I don’t think you really are, alright?”

JJ gave him a bit of a confused look.

“I don’t think you really are,” Otabek repeated, but was he talking to himself or JJ? He forced himself to stop. “The sixth son has a lot of responsibilities. And he has to fulfill them,” he continued.

“Pfff, I was a _prince,_ ” JJ said. “And what I know is that responsibilities _pay off._ Sixth son gets to be, well, gets to see all the magic, right, and use it all?”

“The sixth son has his magic so tightly bound to his soul,” Otabek nodded, “that he’s invincible to other Haqan.”

“Whaaaaat?” JJ half-gaped, sitting up. “Like – how living things’ magic sticks to them and there’s a lot but it’s hard to get at – you mean no one could even _get at_ mine?!”

“Yes,” Otabek affirmed, pleased JJ had remembered what Otabek had instructed him on how magic works. 

JJ seemed to have caught how Otabek was struggling, and waited.

“You’re not invincible, exactly,” Otabek said, at last. “There’s one thing that will take everything out of you: Onomal.”

JJ scrunched his brow. His one eye was _so_ blue, even with the curtains half-cast. “It seems familiar . . .“

“It’s the temple in our capital. Dust and rubble now, I expect.”

“OK . . . . so I get close and . . . it sucks all the magic out of me? I die?“

Otabek took a breath in. “And you have to let it,” he said.

There was what seemed like a cracking, splitting silence.

JJ remained quiet.

Otabek forced his breath out, exhale, and kept going.

“Deep, buried under the temple, is the strongest spell-hold one can ever find. We say it is the mark where Pel’s fingertips left the earth from forming it. It is where the Order is held. Pel chooses the sixth son to bear the power to restore Order, but it is into this conduit in the temple that power must be emptied. It is where every sixth son has to go.” Otabek swallowed. “And where every sixth son is buried.”

The silence continued, making Otabek frustrated.

“So you _can’t_ be the sixth son!” Otabek shouted, all of a sudden, fist slamming into the mattress.

“Well . . . your friend Mila doesn’t think I am, and you just said she’s probably right . . . and you’re right, I’m terrible at magic and maybe the spell just messed me up . . . “ JJ trailed.

Otabek got up and started to pace around the room. He couldn’t think of anything to say. Too many thoughts whirlpooled inside his head: one piece of evidence against the other, a botched spell he didn’t know _how_ he’d botched, someone he was fairly sure he loved by now.

“Otabek, we don’t know. It’s no use in guessing until we get there, right?” JJ said.

Breathing a tight sigh, Otabek moved his head, somewhere between a nod and a shake.

“We have to find out, so we have to get there, so we have to sleep right now,” JJ said.

Otabek joined him back in the bed.

They didn’t speak again until they were both asleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Over the next two days, they didn’t speak as much as usual. It seemed as if the future had suddenly gotten a lot closer, placing heavy hands on their shoulders. Riding this much made them both sore; there was no point to wearing the necklace as the spell had disentangled and fallen loose. At least it was a store of magic. It was likely, Otabek thought, that JJ was, in his silence, thinking about his fate and wondering about the coup going on back in his capital; neither of them spoke. When falling asleep or waking up, Otabek would have the worst sort of thoughts over the _is-he-or-isn’t-he_ matter, and they ran along the lines of this: _should I be close to him, should I be giving my heart to him? (_ Which he was.) _If he does turn out to be the sixth son, and he must meet his fate as all do?_

Otabek had never seen this side of JJ; stoic determination to simply keep going. In the absence of answers or knowledge, it was indeed the best thing to do.

It was just _hard_ to do.

 

* * *

 

 

The rocky face of the cliffs were close at last; noonday sun made Otabek’s back hot, and he had already removed his leather outer tunic and slung it across his horse. These horses they had taken were at least not Alnaithean racing stock, but hauling wagons and carriages of people was much different from such a long and grueling trek; already Otabek and JJ (the latter only to a small extent, headaches and dizziness plaguing him any time he tried to use magic) had used up what was left in the feather necklace to help their pace. They had taken a brief path cutting through the forest, rode through rolling hills of brush and rock, and now they were here. These lower ranges of the mountains were stone with spindly trees growing out of crevices and greenery lining ridges and edges, hinting that there might be a passage up, if one could find it.

Now they had to rely totally on Otabek’s hawk to find that entrance, trotting along behind it as it swooped and flew.

At last it alighted on a tree that was mostly branches and not many leaves, giving a cry. There, tucked away behind a rather steep outcrop was a path that started up the mountain, not easily viewed from the front.

Otabek kicked his horse into the lead. This was Haqan territory, and he was their best chance at a respectable entry.

 

* * *

 

 

As Otabek reigned his horse up at the outskirts of the encampment, much larger than Otabek had expected: set in a rocky valley and surrounded by steep-rising mountains, into which it looked like dwellings had been cut, in addition to homes clustered in the cleared valley, two Haqan guards came dashing to meet the newcomers, crossing tall weapons reminiscent of poleaxes. Dismounting, Otabek motioned for JJ to do the same; he spoke to the guards in Haqan. _Otabek Altin, I carry the ingredients for the next Speaking, and I bring a candidate, if I may speak to one of the circle._

They were admitted without too much trouble; a guard led them through the camp, which was really more like a large town. JJ was busy staring and gaping at the dwellings, people and plots of growing things; rugs hung out to dry; the harsh sound of chisel as two Haqan worked at a sculpture. Those outside to see the odd procession stared back.

Otabek hadn’t had much to eat that day, but he still felt his stomach sit heavy inside him.

 

* * *

 

 

Everything went smoothly, too smoothly for Otabek’s liking, as Otabek and JJ met with the circle, the Qana’s closest advisors, and the Qana himself, an aging man but still clearly with all his wits about him. Those who recognized JJ as the prince knew he was Alnaithean; those who didn’t, surprisingly, as they were led to a spare housing cut into the side of the mountain and interacted with curious Haqan, assumed he was Haqan, due to his hair. All of them, though, would give JJ’s split eyes a strange look.

They settled into the quarters given them. Otabek didn’t know how much he missed Haqan food; even the light fare they were given brought his childhood rushing back in just a few bites or smells.

Still they were relatively quiet. JJ simply asked Otabek why these free Haqan had their hair shaved as slaves. Were there escapees? No, Otabek informed him, they do it to be unified in spirit with the rebellion happening in Alnaith. That was what Mila had told him, anyways. 

Otabek found an inkbook in one of the room’s chest and he had the sudden urge to record everything that had happened so far. For someone to read later? For himself, in case the worst should happen?

 


	4. Chapter 4

By the time Otabek has finished ordering the ink in the pages of the book to words, by magic, telling their tale from the start, the sun is setting. The whole encampment is gathered for the Speaking in the center of the mountain fortified city they’ve made their home, but Otabek and JJ hang back until JJ will be needed.

The cliff-face home unit is neat and tidy with venting and piping hollowed perfectly through the mountain itself, so even the woven mat on the stone floor is warm to Otabek’s bare feet. JJ returns from playing with some children; now they have just spare minutes to themselves before they’ll have to make their way to the center of where the Haqan remnant are gathered. There’s a light source and then slanted metal panels around the ceiling cover the room in a soft glow.

JJ sits on the low cushioned bench with his knees drawn up and head to the side while Otabek paces. Eventually Otabek stops and their gazes connect; Otabek’s dark brown eyes and JJ’s split gaze, blue and gold.

“If this doesn’t work, the headache is going to kill me,” JJ says certainly, but tiredly. “I’m sure this is a lot worse than people looking through each other’s spectacles feel. Behind my eyes hurts,” he complains, burying his head in between his arms and chest as he rests his elbows on his knees.

Otabek nods.

JJ sighs and looks back at Otabek. “You still think I’m not the sixth son? What do they think?”

“I don’t know . . . “ Otabek glances through the slit in the curtained door. “I haven’t talked to the Qana alone yet.”

“They’re so happy and excited out there,” JJ sighs. “They’ve been super nice. Imagine if Alnaith knew there was this out-pocket still surviving up here. I love this . . . “ he nudges a plate beside him on the bench, “this thing. Gorpal . . . something . . . “

Otabek doesn’t even try to correct him. He finds himself pacing again. “If you _are_ the sixth son . . . I don’t know if they want you to be.”

“Hm?” JJ says. Then, “Oh. Because I’m _Alnaithean_.”

“But _I_ don’t want you to be,” comes out of Otabek before he can stop himself. “If you _are_ – you don’t have to – do what you’re supposed to, there has to be some other –"

“I don’t know either, I’m just a bit _scared_ if I’m honest,” JJ says, embracing Otabek tightly, before there’s the sound of someone approaching outside and they quickly break apart.

The bookkeeper of the encampment, Otabek thinks he remembers correctly, sweeps open the curtain and beckons them out, a short phrase to Otabek in Haqan, interrupting the conversation that wasn’t over.

JJ looks at Otabek, lifts his chin. What will be will be now. But there’s a knot in Otabek’s stomach: the rest of the story that’s yet unwritten, and how it unfold if the Speaking _does_ work.

Every step they take, closer to the bright gathering in the center of the encampment, only makes Otabek’s stomach churn more.

 

* * *

 

JJ has always been unafraid of heights.

The morning is clear and warm, and they've walked up on terraced switchbacks on the mountainside together as the encampment wakes up. Otabek will have a meeting with the Qana and the circle of four leaders in not much less than an hour, and he chews his lip when he thinks of it.

JJ is particularly close to the edge. He turns around to face Otabek, light of the sunrise slicing around his figure, backlit, except for his blue eyes – both of them, now, since last night’s Speaking. There is no denying it now. Oh, no denying it.

Well, there _has been._ Otabek has been denying himself the truth. He has almost believed this, _no chance JJ is the sixth son, he’s not actually the sixth son._ He can’t be, he still _can’t_ – but he is, the thought circles in Otabek’s mind.

“I’m not dizzy anymore. I still can’t believe we got here – it feels like I was half-awake the whole time – I can see everything so _well._ I can see all of it,” JJ says. He looks up, around, turning around slowly. That’s an experience only a sixth son will ever have, being able to see _all_ the magic. And know where it all goes. “I still can’t believe this.”

During the Speaking, when both eyes turned blue, there was surprise, then jubilation. Still, beneath the festive frenzy, Otabek had felt tension, looking for the Qana in the crowd, finding his kind smile halfway through the night, then no more.

He’d at least stuck around to see the ceremonial raising of six pillars, stone hewn roughly, makeshift, not marble, but there all the same – for the new sixth son to lift into place. It was customary for them to all be lifted at once, and for there to be one earth-shaking _tHUMP_ as they fell into place – but JJ had raised them one at a time.

He’d seemed unaware of the proper procedure. Although Otabek knew he wasn’t. He’d run through it with JJ . . . maybe the prince had forgotten.

Last night JJ had been grinning like he’d smoked more than his share of the flower the Alnaitheans like to crush and smolder and inhale, everything serious forgotten with his abilities completely opened up, but this morning he’s like a calm lake, smooth and wondrous glass. Like Otabek has never seen him before.

“And I _know_ it has to go somewhere. That’s right, right?” JJ asks Otabek, who nods, and stands beside him, the thick-leaved plaited shrubs a fuzzy border on the rocky ledge.

“Exactly,” Otabek says.

JJ stands there and the only motion is the slight breathing shift of his shoulders. Otabek watches him. His heart’s sore inside him, and he wants to stay in this moment as long as he can, selfishly so. Before they talk about what’s next.

They have to, eventually.

“So, now that I’m _actually_ the sixth son, not like Mila had you convinced . . . I have to . . . ” JJ says, turning around.

Here it is.

“She never had me convinced, I convinced my _self_ ,” Otabek says through clenched teeth, forcing himself to exhale after. He can’t seem to say what he needs to. They begin walking along again.

“First of all, did you forget to raise all the pillars at the same time?” Otabek says the much easier thing first.

“Oh.” JJ frowns. “Well, maybe I still have a bit of that focusing thing to get past. It didn’t – fix itself. I’m sure it’ll get better. I mean, I can see so much more, and well – I already told you.”

“Right,” Otabek says. Strange how even after the completed Speaking, JJ should be lacking that basic skill.

A light breeze kicks up the top scruff of JJ’s hair briefly.

 “Look,” JJ says, frustratedly, sounding like he might explode suddenly, like he’s been holding it in: “I need to think about this.”

Otabek swallows and nods. “You don’t _have to_. There’s nothing to say you _have to_.” And it's not about thinking, it's about the consequences that they've determined to put off considering until such a time as exactly this.

“I just need to think! I – I still can’t – I can’t stand it, I’m happy and I’m sad and I don’t know,” he says. “Don’t come with me, I should just think,” he says, sharply to Otabek, though Otabek knows this anger is not directed at him, and marches up ahead on the path, leaving Otabek.

It hurts, because what time they have left is precious, and Otabek would rather spend it with JJ than anyone else.

 

* * *

 

The meeting hall is also the lodge for the ruling Qana, even in this refugee state, decorated with pristine patterns set in the walls.

They sit on customary low benches around a table and begin, sound spells sealing the entry.

Otabek has to put on a conniving front, as soon as it becomes apparent the leadership of the Haqan remnant are not as happy with the Speaking outcome as they appeared to be. He plots with the Qana and his circle of four; missing one position.

The sixth son as an Alnaithean is unacceptable. This is the consensus. Otabek flinches at the language used to refer to JJ.

The plan is to Tie the Alnaithean (that’s all he is) to a war leader, use his power to carry out victories the Haqan can most definitely not achieve in their state, with the shaken Order, and then, finally, to drag him to Onomal, against his will, all this: as if he doesn’t have one.

The first step is the Tie.

But it’s not the Tie – the _alo_ \-- that is done with festivity, friends and family. It’s an _o’alo_. There is no translation for this _o’_ that falls heavy as a stone in the room. It is the opposite of the Order. It is the opposite of Haqan way. How they must guard their magic. It will be uneven, and there will be no consent. Which way the unevenness will side is clear.

It is forbidden to cast any _o’_ spell. Except, in the direst of circumstances, and even then . . . but, apparently, tradition is broken tonight, by the strength of spite and hate and fury provoked by the remnants of an overtaken and enslaved race.

“A necessary plan, but where do we have the magic stores needed?” Otabek says, leaning on an elbow, hoping he appears as in agreement as the other circle members. In reality, his throat and stomach twist inside him. _Escape!_ is the instinct running in his mind.

The old Qana still smiles kindly, but his eyes are dark and shrewd. “We have planned a raid on a close Alnaithean town. They have built it just inside our own borders.”

“Where?” Otabek asks, taking a drink and plucking a fruit from the platter in the middle of the table. Is he overdoing the nonchalance?

“It is by the Botlala river, on the northeastern edge of the forest,” another circle member answers.

“There are no holds of magic there,” Otabek says – and then realizes, just as another circle member says,

“It is well-populated.”

“Alnaitheans. They love to grow their numbers, but for what?” another comments.

Otabek half-grins, or forces it. “We’ll need every one of our competent magickers.”

To pull the magic from human lives needed for the _o’alo_.

“We’ll have forces ready for tonight. Otabek, please keep the _prince_ occupied until then. Let him play with the pebbles or reeds, or rocks in the rockfield north of here. He will be a hero, just like he wants to be,” the Qana says.

“There is something wrong with him anyways, he can’t focus any of the sight he has,” Otabek laughs, choking on his own derogatory tone. But it seems to work.

“Cursed Alnaith. Let Pel give us our victory at last!” says a circle member.

Otabek’s lips move to agree.

 _Run!_ his mind says.

 

* * *

 

“Play with rocks,” Otabek tells JJ urgently. They’ve gone to the northern rock field, as promised, and some children who are beautifully oblivious to the plotting going on are watching as the _sixth son_. . . well, plays with rocks. When he rejoined JJ after the meeting, it seemed like JJ had reached some conclusion, by the serious air around him.

“Oh OK,” JJ agrees. He magically bats around rocks and pebbles in this giant outcrop, randomly, speckled stones creating a bit of a ruckus. “This is _so much_ easier now.” His words belie the truth of the tone underneath: that there is a consequence to be had for this ease.

“Let’s look like you’re having fun and we’re just walking sort of into the rock field, so we’re out of earshot,” Otabek murmurs. He glances up briefly into the clear blue sky where his hawk is swooping after some prey.

JJ agrees. They balance and hop on rocks all the way to the rough center of the field. It looks like the children, at a good distance, are engrossed by Otabek’s bird hurking down whatever it found to eat, then spitting the inedible parts back up.

“We have to get out of here,” Otabek says to JJ once he’s sure they’re out of earshot.

“What? Why? To . . . to what did you say . . . that place?” JJ’s expression clouds.

“I guess we could go there – it could take as much as two weeks, we can figure that out later. But they don’t like you, the Qana and the circle. They’re planning to . . . “ Otabek tries to figure out a simple way to put this: “raid an Alnaithean town, bring enough people here and mass kill them for enough magic to basically bind your powers to someone else and use that to overthrow Alnaith, and _then_ take you to Onomal, if they haven’t accidentally killed you or something has gone terribly wrong by then.”

JJ blinks. “OK,” he says. “Let’s run. We’ll need fresh horses, I saw you have your own horses here.”

Otabek slows down, now that there’s a plan they agree on. He looks down at the black moss on the boulder they currently share. He places a hand on JJ’s chest.

“Before we run -- what did you decide,” he says, quietly. “You _are_ the sixth son, no matter your troubles with focusing or how you got here. But you don’t have to . . . do what you’re supposed to.” He looks up at JJ.

Blue eyes, dark lashes, gifted Haqan shirt and tough vest, JJ looks like a good northern Haqan, with his lighter skin. One hand covers Otabek’s, on his chest. They stand like that.

“I was supposed to be a prince that had fun at other people’s expense,” JJ says to Otabek at length, when Otabek realizes there has been silence, only filled with _them_. JJ tilts his head to the side. “I think . . . this is, actually, a lot better. Even with . . . the whole . . . death. Thing.” One shoulder moves in a tiny shrug. “I do. I swear to. I will,” JJ says.

“If you were Haqan to the bone, we would change your name,” Otabek says. “When you are sworn into a position like Qana, or commit to a covenant like this. We make it shorter. Milacheva, my friend, we made her honorary Qanaa. Mila.”

JJ’s lips twitch. “Jean-Jacques Alain Leroy was always a mouthful. Call me Jean.”

“May fate follow,” Otabek murmurs quietly, reflexively, in Haqan.

They still stand. Cries from the children in the background; hiss of wind against stone. JJ cut his hair too short down the center to braid, so it blows free and stiff.

“How long do we really have before I have to . . . go to –” JJ, Jean now, says.

Otabek sighs tightly, cutting him off: he doesn’t want to hear that more than he must. “We have time. The world’s not done tearing apart yet. But when Order is restored, my sight and all other Haqan’s sight will become what they once were . . . you know what that means for our fight back against Alnaith.”

“Then – could we go back to the capital and – I could at least explain to Theo and Alain and Adam, and Nicolas, and Francine and Louise –”

“Yes, yes of course,” Otabek rushes to say, “There’s lots of time.”

 _And then:_ the ultimate phrase hangs between them.

“If I didn’t go, would you make me?” Jean says to Otabek. (Jean. _Jean._ The soft J feels good, rolling around in Otabek’s head.) He’s not talking about the Alnaithean capital. “Would you put the Order back? I can see it. I can see it all. I can tell things are going wrong and magic’s slipping out of place. Would you make me do it?”

“I’d try . . . my damn best,” Otabek swallows. He can’t look at Jean. He doesn’t mean he’d drag Jean there, trick him, do, oh who _knows_ – at least, not only Jean. He’d have to make himself. That would be the hardest part. It might be _too_ hard. Jean’s what he’s got. His family are dead, or good as. Mila is the closest thing to a friend he has. But JJ, Jean, the sixth son though he be, is his _love_. “I would,” Otabek says, then, in his mind, _if I could._

Jean can’t hear that part, though.

“Good man,” Jean says. Fingers press under Otabek’s chin and tilt their lips to a kiss. It lingers, pressing, not too deep, not too shallow. Jean seems to have enough focus for this, that the magic floating in the air warps around them briefly, and for seconds they’re a trick of the eyes to anyone who should be watching.

 

* * *

 

Otabek’s heart starts pounding for _real_ when the horses (stockier than Alnaithean-bred beasts, Jean makes a joke about ‘ponies’) reach the foot of the mountain. Not only has it been a solid hour and a bit since they explain they were going ‘for a ride, just around the encampment!’, but also, this leaves them very visible to anyone watching. No chance they’ll be going back along the same route, in case word should have gotten out and they’re searched for by either Alnaith or the Haqan encampment. From here, they’ll have to cross the shrubby terrain before booting it into the forest and making for the southwestern path. It will take longer, but hopefully be safer.

Otabek says as much to Jean as they take a short break to let the horses drink from a trickling stream passing under a low wooden bridge that is pretty much the last point that can’t be seen easily from the encampment above. They’re both already sweating, legs cramped from holding on during the steep and jolting descent, and Jean a lot worse, because he has no Alnaithean riding gear as he’s used to. Scant food is with them, but there are drinking flasks, what Alnaithean currency Jean had left, Jean’s broadsword, and Otabek’s crossbow and arrows with a pair of Haqan scala’a blades. This load is not best for the endurance of the horses, and it doesn’t help that they went down as fast as they could – poor beasts will be glad for a gallop, at least, on flatter terrain.

“I can shield us,” Jean says, confidently. “I know I can. It’s not – it won’t need a lot of magic.”

The corner of his lips turns south briefly. "Or focus," he adds.

Immediately, the rise of the rocky mountain a stone’s throw behind them, egress for the path marked by spindly redwooded brush, turns into – turns into the inside of Otabek’s tower, his space in the Alnaith capital castle, complete with the bed Jean spent a lot of time recuperating on and the shelves for all his accoutrements.

Something like homesickness is what Otabek feels before Jean twists the image away. It’s strange.

“Some things are simple,” Jean grins.

“Right, let’s just keep our time down then,” Otabek says.

“My ass hurts like hell and after I finish with this mirage I’ll have to tend to that,” Jean mutters as they mount up again.

Otabek’s bird flies above them as they start out across the largely empty expanse, at the tip of an invisible sword, or so Otabek feels. It will be a grueling forty minutes, and not so much on the body as on the mind, wondering if they’ve been sighted fleeing or not.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They make it to the outskirts of the forest about as fast as Otabek expected. He has tried to resist checking over shoulder, but failed, but seen nothing.

Drawing closer together (Otabek has been leading), Jeans reins his horse to sidle next to Otabek’s, giving them a break.

“Still keeping up the mirage?” Otabek asks.

Jean nods. “Won’t need it soon.” He looks ahead towards the forest. It’s old, with tall trees, fairly closely packed; you could ride through, off the path, but not very quickly. “Magic to make the horses faster?” he asks Otabek.

“Not a bad idea. It’s a long time to keep it up, though.”

“Can see once we’re in the trees if there’s enough hanging around.”

They’ll be riding too fast to effectively gather any magic. Jean eyes Otabek’s belt.

“And you have some stores.”

Otabek looks down at the hammered brackets on his belt. “I am thinking to save them. In case we . . . have trouble.”

“Fair,” Jean assents.

They break into an initial trot, the safety of the forest calling them.

 

* * *

 

The coolness of the forest is calming, but Otabek feels it’s deceptive, as the sun begins to set. They’re travelling on the main path, making good time so far, but suddenly Jean calls a halt.

“I really, really am not used to riding like this,” he says, dismounting with a wince. “Especially not having more than a day and a half break since our ride here. I hear a stream.”

“They’re going to be coming after us sooner or later,” Otabek says warningly to Jean, although they have a good head start.

“If I can’t ride, we’re dead,” Jean argues.

So they go find the stream. Decent magic source, and the horses deserve a break. The smell of pine surrounds them; off the path, the ground is studded with rocks and it’s mostly earth, with tree branches and dips in terrain creating uneven footing, especially around sharp drops leading to small creeks still rushing from their journey down the mountains.

After mounting again, Jean with some grunts of complaint, they begin to pick their way back to the path.

“Who will they send after us?” Jean asks.

“I don’t know. If they do the raid anyways, they’ll need most of their magickers. Still, they _know_ you’re the sixth son.”

“And they know I didn’t lift the pillars right. Cause I couldn't."

“Well, they probably assumed you were a stupid Alnaithean and you didn’t know how, not that you . . . couldn't," Otabek says, still inwardly a little mystified and worried that Jean lacks foundational focus needed to use magic.

Jean scoffs agreeably.

“They don’t have any advanced weapons? Explosives? What could be dangerous?” Jean asks as they rejoin the main path. Here and there, signs of battalion encampments are still stamped into the brush, from the recent Alnaithean-Haqan war.

Otabek shakes his head. “I’m not sure at all. Back when I was a child, we had _amakos_ : huge animals, you could ride them, and very friendly and smart. They have the horns, like this.” Otabek makes a gesture to Jean, who laughs.

“I don’t know it,” he says.

“And we also had . . . “ Otabek trails. He looks back in his seat. The sun has mostly set by now and sparse slants of light blotch Jean, filtering from the tree cover above, as he too turns back.

Faint chorusing sounds that sound a little like the bellows for the Engine being started up are _just_ audible.

_We had hounds, and we bred them and grew them big, and they were kept in the cages, watched, fed, until they had to be released –_

But of course, Jean did pay _some_ attention to his kingdom’s affairs as a Prince and he finishes the sentence: “Hounds? Because that kind of sounds like – “

“ _Gallop!”_ Otabek yells, and they take off, horses’ hooves pounding the ground.

Otabek puts his own magic towards speeding their flight, and knows Jean will follow his lead.

 _They likely noticed us leaving and let the hounds free as soon as it was dark enough for them to see,_ is what he thinks through his fear, and then can only grip his horse tight and aid every stroke of its legs with what magic he can muster and direct there.

 

* * *

 

 

Otabek wakes up.

At least that.

Memories of being chased by the Qana's hounds in the night-- yes, last night, because ever so faintly there _is_ dawn light coming through leaves and tree trunks surrounding him -- the deep, gruff barks and baying, closer, ever closer – the despair that the horses were too exhausted to outrun them -- the terrible moment when a heavy paw caught his ankles and then everything that happened next -- rushes back.

He staggers up and does an inventory, using his sight on himself: he's bruised, and bleeding, and, when he tries to walk, limping, but it seems as if he lost consciousness from expending magic and not blood.

A hound carcass impedes his way most immediately and he has to high-step over the mound of dead flesh covered in coarse black fur, wobbling and leaning on a tree trunk for balance. It seems like, from the size of the beast, the Haqan remnant spent good time maintaining the pack of the hounds they must have escaped with, running from Alnaith.

Otabek smells an iron smell of old blood, and the pine scent, and wet dew of the morning. Here, the forest floor is dirt blanketed with needles and creeping greenery; barely any shrubs to be seen, but tree after tree rising up, rod-straight and strong, rocky steps and unevenness in the terrain here and there.

Where's he going, as he staggers on, the ground slightly springy under his feet, weaving between tree trunks and wincing over tree roots? just to a small open space -- and he looks around -- his sight doesn't stretch far at all, but he can't see any living signature large and potent enough to be the sixth son.

He remembers his crossbow. Oh, there's not much point in looking for it. How about his two scala’a? Hopefully there are no remaining hounds. There are definitely no remaining horses; if they escaped, they will be miles away by now. Well, there shouldn't be any remaining hounds at least, since Otabek is still alive.

He sets to looking for his scala’a in a small radius from where he woke, and calling, "Jean!", and using magic sight, but seeing nothing.

It's pleasantly surprising to find both scala’a embedded in the underside of another hound carcass, innards and whatnot spilled onto the forest floor. Otabek’s never really been a melee fighter. But the feeling lasts for scarcely a moment.

Otabek musters himself and pulls them out. Maybe he should gather some magic while he's at it; the hounds have been dead for some hours, but not enough that all the magic has left them, and better yet, it's loose enough it's not too hard for Otabek to store a bit of what's left in the beast into the shining reams of his scala’a. He holds one up for a faint light, simple glow spell, stretching the knot in his stomach tight, because Jean isn't answering at all. Muddled, he knows that they got separated in the fight last night, but prays it wasn't too far.

He sets out in a rough spiral from his waking point because there's no telling where Jean would be. Maybe Jean's looking for him -- maybe he should stay put, the thought crosses his mind -- but with a lump in his throat he knows there were too many hounds, too vicious.

As he keeps his muscles and mind on the task of finding good footing, between trees and over trunks, blood and hound's fur caught on sharp splintered stumps here and there, he notices the bottom hem of his robe under the thick, creased overcoat he wears has been torn, and his right sleeve as well; thankfully, there are many scratches there but only surface wounds, already clotting.

"Jean!" he continues to call.

Almost twisting his ankle on a particularly painful step, he stumbles to a knee, palms slamming on a fallen trunk, rough split bark with a trail of bugs crawling along it. He knows, then, if he wants to keep searching, he'll have to heal himself first.

It takes an exhausting amount of concentration to focus his sight on his ankle, locate the tendons and ligaments and find where they've got tears, and then stab one scala into the earthy ground for support, concentrating the magic flow to repair.

Repair some, not all. He still has a dark feeling he should save some for when he finds Jean. _When._

He realizes just how hungry and thirsty he is when he tries to push himself back up to standing; he's so tired and they'll have to get themselves on the mend and figure out which way is south-west and start to head there again before the Qana figures out that none of the hounds are coming back.

But as he’s raising his body and eye level above the tree trunk, there’s a glint far off, between two trees, in the still-cold morning light. His heartbeat surges and he’s up, he’s fixing his gaze on that brief shine and rushing there, stumbling really (over more dead hound meat than forest, torn in strange patterns as if with uncontrolled magic), as fast as he can and –

\-- it’s the hilt of Jean’s broadsword, the half-length of which is embedded in the throat of a hound collapsed on the ground, dark blood coagulating on its fur and the forest floor from the gash through its neck, and right beside, legs half-buried still under the beast, claws still at the end of four slashes in his thigh, is the sixth son himself.

Sight right away tells Otabek he’s still alive as he drops down beside the mess of someone who’s fallen in the middle of a fight. But, even for Otabek’s decreasing vision, the magic signature is weak. Head wound, something fractured in his leg that screams a precautionary _don’t move!,_ his clothes ripped on his chest with more blood, and some is still fresh, not clotted, still running free; down his other leg, the thigh wound revealed in full as Otabek shoves the dead hound off Jean. Cuts and bruises run further down his leg. Otabek glances around. There’s a solid four stinking hound carcasses immediately surrounding, and three bear the look of a desperate magic kill, no kind of damage even the best weapon could do, something that looks like an explosion from inside out. Desperate even for Jean’s standards (the sixth son that can see everything and can’t seem to focus on enough).

Otabek can see Jean is using his magic, using even as he’s unconscious, a maintenance spell, autonomic most likely. _Oh no._ It’s a reflex, a deadly reflex, numbing the pain without healing.

He’ll have to lift it off.

He must do it. Only way to get JJ out of it. He focuses on the natural soothing circulation of magic Jean has going. It’s tough to halt it – anytime he tries to fight anything in Jean, now, the sheer presence of ability inside him is a daunting force – but he pulls out the last reserves of magic from the brackets on his belt and Jean gasps, stirring, face contorting in pain.

“Don’t put your spell back on, I know it hurts but you need to heal yourself,” Otabek yells, as if volume will do any good, but he’s too stressed to do anything else.

“ _Augh_ ,” Jean is gasping, and he’s trying to put the anesthetic spell back on, but Otabek flops as close as he can until they’re face to face.

“ _Jean, you’re dying, you need to heal yourself,_ ” Otabek says.

Jean seems to get the idea, breathing forced, looking like he’s biting back the pain. “Help me,” he says.

Otabek tries to start but he has nothing left. There’s magic around him but he hasn’t got the power to gather any. And – he tries to start on Jean’s chest, leg, he has to get them all at once or something else could go wrong – but he doesn’t have the sight for that, there’s too much damage. “I can’t,” Otabek says.

Jean takes him at his word. Otabek can only watch as Jean gathers the magic, he has the sight, clearly, to attend to every area, to know _exactly_ what’s wrong, he has a hold on it, he has enough control, he gathers magic in, what’s around them, some from the fresh death around them. _Yes,_ Otabek breathes, but Jean squints his eyes shut and just as everything starts to right itself, everything falls out of place, like the tether’s cut, and the magic goes free: entropy.

“Augh!” Jean bites off. “I can see it, I can see it, it’s like the pillars, I tried but I can’t focus –” There’s sweat on his forehead even though it’s cool – “You know Otabek when I was little I was just like that I couldn’t focus and that’s why it took me so long to learn to read and all the servants hated me for that and I was always running off to do stupid things and I’d challenge myself to sit still but I think my record is maybe 11 seconds, but you didn’t hate me Otabek—”

“ _Shut up, Jean, try again!_ ” Otabek almost screams as Jean’s words run together, his face still written with pain.

Wordless, magic gathers, trembles on spot, but some threads slip and then all of them slip.

Jean looks pale and the magic’s scattered around him. “I can’t do it, can’t focus on it like you, all I do is see it, it’s not like the image, or throwing rocks it’s so _hard_ ,” he says, tears beading at his eyes, hands going to grip Otabek’s face on either side. “Otabek I can’t – “

“Try again,” Otabek says, so hoarsely, even as _he’s_ trying again, but he can barely even tackle the sprain and the bruising up the leg at the same time.

Jean can barely even gather enough magic before his hold quivers and jumps and he loses focus. He’s looking pale. Everything seems to stop as the realization that this might be it slams down on Otabek. Jean’s squirmed enough the leg fracture has caused bleeding. He’s got maybe minutes.

“You can do it,” Otabek says, words barely making it out his mouth, but Jean just has a crooked painful grin in response to that and then Otabek’s vision is all clouded and warped. He’s crying, he realizes, as Jean’s arms fall limp, eyes half-shut and motionless. Otabek wraps his arms under Jean’s torso and pulls him up to bring them chest to chest; he presses his forehead against Jean’s and grips him like that will keep him alive, even as his rational mind is closing the door. _No, it’s over, there are no more options._ “Of course you can do it,” Otabek’s lips move, _I believe in you, I love you._ He’s unbearably _angry,_ that he should die this way, when fate already told him his place and purpose of death: does destiny dare to _mock_ them so?

He takes a sharp, sobbing inhale into the cold forest, pressed against Jean, but the inhale doesn’t seem to end. So he keeps breathing. And breathing, and breathing, it seems. For some reason now he’s warm, spreading from head to toe, and it’s bright like morning has finally dawned. In the plentiful light, he sees himself, a mess; then he sees Jean. He is himself; he is Jean. He flickers between the two until they’re blurred, something great swelling inside them (they’re both like this, somehow) and then the inhale ends.

The forest is still cold morning, and there is still death and blood on the ground, but Otabek lays Jean back down, sees all his wounds, _sees_ them, gathers the magic, holds it, and works it like the most skillful magicker to ever attempt such a healing; Jean is working too, no, it’s Jean gathering it and seeing it, but Otabek sees it too, and he’s keeping them focused. Blood vessels re-knit. Skin layers grow back closed and bones shaft on mineral layers, strong as new. Well, they _are_ new.

Jean sits up to his knees; Otabek’s on his knees too; and then they’re healing Otabek’s wounds.

It’s over soon. The area is sapped of magic, but it’ll flow back. Now they’re just holding each other.

“What was that,” Jean breathes, and his voice never sounded so good.

“We Tied,” Otabek says, his heart skipping a beat. It’s just like his parents used to tell him. _You don’t know what it is like until you experience it, and then you know_. But where are the beautiful clean traditional dresses? The throngs of family and friends? Circle members and the Qana there to assist in the spell casting? The complex glyphs, the focusing points, for the Tying magic to hold? They are not here, in the cold forest morning, aftermath of blood drawn in the dark.

“Tied for what? What game are we playing? Who almost _dies?_ ” Jean says.

Otabek laughs and it almost hurts.

“No, we – we share now. Look,” Otabek says, pulling them apart, looking into Jean’s eyes, “ _Look_ at me. Not with your physical eyes.”

Instinctively, it seems, Jean takes Otabek’s hand.

Magic, so closely bound to living beings, so _hard_ to take, hard enough to take you’d have to kill to take it, flows easily as water going downhill, through their touch. It’s bright, and warm.

“ _Oh,_ ” Jean says.

All Haqan know that the stronger the bond between two people, the more easily the Tying spell is cast, the deeper it holds. Sometimes, glyphs aren’t even needed.

This is the first time that Otabek has ever known a Tying to not even require a verbal spell, to need nothing except the strength of what the two participants have within them and between them already.

They stand up. Healing doesn’t fix ripped shirts, bloodstains, or dirty faces.

“Usually, when two people are Tied, they’re wearing nicer clothes,” Otabek grins, giving JJ a once-over.

“Oh. Ohhhhhh, it’s like a wedding?”

They’re still holding hands, marveling at how easily magic flows.

“Absolutely not,” Otabek says.

But Jean pulls him into a close embrace; they _step – step – step_ a few times, mock waltz, almost tripping over the remains of the fight underneath.

“You may kiss the bride,” Jean laughs. His arms go around Otabek, Otabek grips the small of his back and winds his fingers in the top of Jean’s undercut and pulls their bodies close; and Otabek must be the bride.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it SAYS it's finished but I was daydreaming yesterday and came up with some kickass scenes and plot points so ,... we'll see


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> haha I made a sketch of a cover for this piece o' shit https://tmblr.co/ZPfNRf2a6hCKf

 “Why would they send hounds after us? I don’t understand. We want the same thing! Maybe they don’t understand that! Maybe they don’t understand that we’re going to restore the Order!”

This outburst after a stuffy minute of walking, setting off in a southwest direction. JJ’s frustrated frown is all too naïve, and the Tie between them is so new and strange that Otabek’s sure JJ’s as unsettled as he is. It’s like a small box that contains much more than it looks, and you might then be afraid to open it, afraid of what might come out. No one has been Tied to a sixth son before. (And for good reason, so Jean had better keep distracting him.)

“Otabek, why can’t we just go back and try to talk to them?” JJ stops and grabs Otabek by the shoulders emphatically.  “I –“

“Because you’re Alnaithean!” Otabek answers. He thinks of the right way to explain this; in the end, you can’t explain years of heritage and culture in a few sentences. “You, being the sixth son, Alnaithean and not Haqan royalty – although obviously you have a small bit of Haqan back in the bloodlines – invalidate everything we believe about our people. The sixth son is sent by Pel to restore the Order, and he is always Haqan, because Pel chose _us_.”

“Well – that’s stupid, I want just the same as you guys. I want the Order, too.”

Jean’s gaze falls to where his hands rest on Otabek’s shoulders, lightly now. Touch opens the flow of magic, an exclusive pathway from one life to another and back again, an equilibrium they control. To what extent – who knows.

“When I die – what happens to you?” Jean blurts all of a sudden, like that question has been knotting itself up in his mind.

Viscerally Otabek turns away. They’re still navigating the rough terrain of the forest, climbing around tree trunks and kicking through low brush; now the morning sun is bright enough, coming down through the dark green fir, that he can feel the back of his head warmed by a shaft of light. The tears in his clothes and his lost crossbow do nothing to change his mood.

“I don’t know,” Otabek says tightly, although he does. Maybe Jean won't ask further. (Of course this is a futile hope.)

“Otabek, if I – when I die –“ Jean repeats, stepping around him, the question urgent, his blue eyes begging an answer.

“When two people are Tied and one person dies the Tie just breaks, it won’t do anything to me, I’ll go on living – “ Otabek says through his teeth, stopping because he questions that statement: could he go on living? Of course, but yet, not so sure in the next heartbeat; can Pel be this cruel, or is there some saving hope that only the goddess can see? His childhood, growing up in what became a warzone, supplies some memories of heartbroken wives or husbands, inconsolable once the Tie was severed by an Alnaithean sword out on the battlefield. However, there are more memories of new Ties being bound, in dress and ceremony as festive as the ongoing battles allowed; Haqan leadership wouldn’t discourage a tradition which put two soldiers on the battlefield that often created a fighting unit better than the sum of its parts. No one taught Otabek or told him so, but dying together is better than saving one half, if you’re Tied, or at least during a war it is.

Here in the forest, they are so naively distanced from what must be going on in the Alnaithean capital. Otabek itches to know how Mila is doing (how successful the uprising has been), but at the same time, there’s a secondhand concern for the royal family. At odds: he’s divided within himself, and not only because of this detail, but also because of its source.

Jean, the need for an answer written on his face by the upward slant of his eyebrows, is still staring at Otabek while he’s thinking, falling deeper into the mire of what has been so clearly laid out to him of his future.

“I’ll go on living,” Otabek repeats himself, more tightly than he intended to. He can’t seem to exhale and unwind himself right now.

Jean opens his mouth as if to make a reply but clamps it shut. He frowns, half his face scrunching a bit more than the other half, and says, “Well let’s just talk about how powerful we are then.”

“Let’s keep walking, though,” Otabek says.

They set off, continuing to high-step over tree trunks and kick through or around bushes. Otabek’s got one scala in half the sheath he managed to wrangle from one horse’s carcass, but the other he grips ready in hand. With no more stores of magic on him, he’d normally feel very underprepared to face any other threat that might be sent their way, but the question Jean is prodding him with should have a good answer.

“You can focus for me,” Jean says as they walk along, sometimes one taking the lead, sometimes the other. “You already did.”

“And you take care of the sight,” Otabek says.

“Can you see right now? See all the magic, everything? I think I’ve gotten good at tuning out the distraction, like how your nose isn’t in the way of your vision, but I’m sure if you were seeing everything for the first time—”

Otabek shakes his head. “No, I can’t. The Tie seems to flow better when we –”

But JJ has already grabbed his hand. The forest is growing more sparse, with more brush and young trees than ranks of giant, haphazardly stationed sentries.

The magic flows. Jean is looking, and not at merely the physical, which seems to pull Otabek’s sight wide open as well. They stop, because he’s speechless as he looks around.

Even just to restore his sight to what it was before the Order decayed so much would have been an adjustment. But this has him lost.

Magic really has no colour, but it gives off an energy so that it might appear closest to a kind of bright gold, or you might think of it as golden, rather. It flows, concentrating around things that live the most, things that move the second most, and then it holds in certain materials and places more than others. To catch sight of magic is not like physical vision at all, so it doesn’t much have a shape; it’s more awareness that it’s there than the ability to sketch it out. But, a good way to approximate magic would be three-dimensional networks of filaments that move, elongate and combine and split, as Order would have it.

Otabek’s gripping Jean’s hand tight. From the distant gaps between the trees that promise open land, to the midground of bushes, to a duck’s nest in a tree and a group of gnats swarming above: everything is clearer than it has ever been.

With Jean’s sight, the knowledge that the Order is decaying is now plentifully clear. It’s in the way the magic flows and holds; it’s not quite right, here and there. Nature is resilient and the Order isn’t something to be snapped in day, but it’s fraying apart, for sure.

“There’s spots worse than others. On our way in, I don’t know if you saw all the dead patches of grass along the path, or off to the side,” Jean says.

The stunning extent to which the entirety of this foundational force that holds the world together has been laid out for Otabek is then sobering in equal measure.

“I must be the first Haqan who is not the sixth son to see as he does,” he murmurs, still gazing, still drinking in this awareness, looking up and down and around. It’s all there; he can see everything, through Jean.

“I wouldn’t know,” Jean says. “So? How powerful are we?”

Finally, Otabek can tear his eyes away from his surroundings. But he looks at Jean, and he can see the systems of careful magic that work inside him, the bright and beautiful life that flows down through him and exchanges, equilibrates with their touch. This is more than just an extended and accurate map; it hits Otabek that this is some kind of trust. What they share goes deep. Their hands, together, mean more than it looks, and it feels like much more than it has.

“Very,” Otabek says. All Haqan have sight, and it’s a small field around them: not always all of the magic present, either. Haqan healers often come in teams, because one can’t see enough to heal a bone but can mend a cut, and one can’t do anything for fever but can ease pain. Certainly all Haqan have the ability to assist motion, which is largely what magic is used for day-to-day, to augment efforts in construction and cleaning and ceremony; but complex tasks like manipulating life systems, or changing things without a physical nudge in the direction desired, require a Haqan with special sight or the proper use of spells. Otabek’s fortunate that his sight turned him in the direction of a healer, and that he applied himself well to the study of spells, before the war turned for the worse. Alnaith can fight without magic, with their experiments and engines in development, exploding packets and machines. But they cannot heal well without magic.

For all Haqan, generally, what you can see is what you can control (excepting magic bound up in others’ life systems), with the standard training all young Haqan receive usually being enough.

And now Otabek can see everything.

“Could we pull out half the forest by its roots?” Jean asks.

Together they look: Jean gives his sight and Otabek his focus.

They nod at each other.

“It all costs something, still,” Otabek warns. “Anything we do still works the same way: we can’t just create magic, and if we do too big a task and pull too much magic out of place from the Order . . . well, we’ve damaged the Order same as Alnaith.”

“I could figure that just from using magic so far,” Jean huffs. He seems to be considering something else, lapsing into silence. “Could we move ourselves, here to there, without walking?”

Otabek raises his eyebrows. That’s a very stupid idea. He doesn’t know of anyone trying to do that; well, of course, no one’s sight goes far enough that it could be useful. Best just to walk and help your steps go a bit faster.

But it’s a question.

They look together.

The answer is: “Maybe,” Otabek says. They have the resources, between them, to do it; just would have to figure out exactly how.

“Could we knock down a whole army, in seconds, just to look at them?” Jean tries, but he looks serious.

“If it’s a matter of pulling up a forest and dropping it on them, or hurling a field of stones, yes,” Otabek says. “But taking their life by the magic bound to them?” He shudders to think of that. “I wouldn’t even ask the question.”

“But we could do it,” Jean says.

That power would be the sixth son’s, not Otabek’s. “I couldn’t.”

“We could. That’s all I’m saying.”

Otabek looks at Jean. They’re still holding hands and frankly, Otabek doesn’t want to let go.

“I don’t mean that we will! I just – was wondering,” Jean says hurriedly. “I just – well, you know.”

He drops their grip so Otabek’s marvelous sight disappears, blanketing inwards to his usual dull awareness of a quarter of the magic present, and only in a small radius around him. Although it does seem a little larger, a little clearer than before. It seems like the Tie does still communicate between them, for them, though not as potently as when they give it a physical bridge. This must come with time, because Otabek knows that Tied Haqan warriors certainly do not fight together holding hands.

They resume walking. Experimenting a bit after Otabek brings it up, they do speed their pace with some magic. Small tasks are no harm to the Order, taking magic from the right place, which is usually free and sparse in the air.

“So we can’t let them get us, then, because they’ll probably rip our Tie up, and then Tie me against my will, although I wouldn’t let them! – to someone who would make me kill pretty much all of Alnaith, probably, and then restore the Order, but of course that is not the right way to do it at all! Otabek, you didn’t find your crossbow? Well I don’t have my sword either, I should probably get another once we find a town. Although do you think we need weapons? . . . “

Otabek’s quite tired of talking, so Jean blathers on about this and that and Otabek gives him minimal encouragers. He catches himself smiling a little when he realizes this is much how their time together at the castle as servant-and-prince would go, with Jean talking and Otabek commenting as required, except when something uniquely Haqan piqued Jean’s interest, and then it would be endless questions. If, then, things still work the same between them, on the edges of the forest with bloodstained clothes, a lonely pair on an unaided quest . . . maybe this was always meant to be.

 

 

 ______________________

 

 

“House arrest” is a close descriptor for the situation you’d see, or would have seen, before the fighting started, but it needs some explaining.

News travels slowly, so while the Haqan uprising was still breaking out in the Alnaithean capital, here, a few days’ ride north, life was going on as usual.

True, he was confined to quarters not too far away from the prison, with rotating guards. But the rotating guards were more like rotating fellows to play a game of cards with, or a rotating panel of bribery (which can go both ways), or a rotating less-than-benign platoon of Alnaithean soldiers who’d been tricked out of some deal they made with their prisoner, which was to be expected when you agreed to that sort of thing.

Living the life wasn’t quite what you’d call it, but he had his hands in a few pockets and could get a halfways good measure of whatever he wanted (usually), which was drinks (sometimes shared with his guards and sometimes not), nights out (mostly to fight or hear music), mandolin privileges, or a few ingredients he was missing for the dumplings he was making. These delicious pockets of goodness could be worth more than their weight in gold to the tastebuds of a few of his guards, and sometimes even so good he and a few others who were also under close watch would be let go to the Central Garden to pick herbs (and talk to ladies, and tell stories, and gaze contemptuously at the mansions of the Lords who kept them locked and guarded). He could also go help work on the pipes and fans, or mineshafts north, but only a complete idiot would volunteer for that kind of work. Likely get your fingers or arm stuck in something and have to get it cut off. Not his cup of tea.

So this is how it was for several months, in fact. Which was a long time for him; he’d never been one to stay in a place or under someone’s thumb for too long, but, dismal truth or not, this lifestyle felt rather comfortable compared to all headache and trouble he’d been through previous. As the days went on, there was a little voice inside that questioned if he was still so sure he’d jump ship again if something that looked like an opportunity came along, questioning if he was getting _too_ comfortable.

It was far easier to kick back, talk rot and chew everyone and everything out when he felt like it.

He did give his guards the slip (not in a good enough mood to make them dumplings) to see the Xang parade come in, but that was all rot too, so he went back and critiqued the foreigners and how big a deal this all was with cellmates in the adjacent housing. When the one soldier found him there, ‘least he was less upset, didn’t draw his weapon at all.

“Just visiting,” the illicit visitor gave as an excuse, finishing the conversation he was having and kicking a rock across the stone floor as he ducked around the berating soldier – _Best get back to y’room, b’y, ‘fore watch changes and Timothy’s back – he’s not so soft as I! –_ to head back to his room.

If Yuri wanted to get out of this prison-not-a-prison, he could, oh, he could easily fillet any one of his duncecap guards alive before they could lose the tune of a song.

But he has nowhere to go.


End file.
